TicketSwap and the Isle of Freedom
Sziget Festival, the 5th largest festival in continental Europe, had its 26th iteration on a small island in the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary a couple of weeks ago. The Isle of Freedom hosted no less than 565,000 attendees, 1,000 music acts and 60 different stages. And we hosted our first ever mega-stage, the TicketSwap Music Box.
When my Hungarian colleague, Tamás, first came up with the idea to sponsor and host a stage at Sziget, I didn’t even blink. I had no idea what Sziget was, let alone how to pronounce it. After a few weeks of investigating and putting together our business plan, my eyes were simply stuck wide open. This thing was gonna be huge. And scary. And fun. The TicketSwap Music Box would sit on the main road between the festival entrance and the back of the island where 150,000 campers (did not) sleep. We hosted over 40 acts for 8 days on the TicketSwap Music Box stage. I met so many great musicians and gave away so many TicketSwap t-shirts… and drank so many beers and danced so much, and slept so little.
If you’ve never been to Sziget, I can only tell you that it’s pretty incredible how an island in the middle of the Danube River can be transformed into a pop-up society of half a million people. The vibe reminds me of the movie The Beach (minus the death), high school band camp, and the biggest house party you’ve ever been to… in your life. It’s incredibly open-minded and really goes to show you how Millenials are getting life right. There is no judgement of nationality, color, shape, size, sexual orientation or gender, yet every one is acting just like you’d expect 20 year olds to act. Insane.
Let me back up a minute… to get to Sziget, Tamás and I were brainstorming for something with more visibility than just hopping on a flight. I offered up my Volkswagen T3 camper as the mode of transport; we would brand it with company logos and drive all the way to Budapest from Amsterdam. The SwapBus wasn’t even our idea originally, but suddenly, there it was.
The next mind blowing idea we had came from the question, how could we get people to come to the TicketSwap Music Box when bands weren’t playing on it? “Swappie the bear” was born. An smile-inducing 3.4 meter tall bear was shoved into the back of the camper and drove with me all the way to Budapest. He really wasn’t the best road trip buddy. He wasn’t even a great colleague to be honest. But he did his job well. We took several hundred photos of festival fans with Swappie.
8 days of music, which truth be told, went from 10am until 6am the following morning EVERY DAY. I slept in the camper backstage, so I could be onsite, monitor everything that was happening with our banners, chairs and giveaways, handle social media first hand, meet the bands, promote TicketSwap to all the fans, talk to thousands of people, smile a lot, until my face hurt, and party a bit myself. There was a moment with the intense heat, dirt, music and crowds that I actually started to believe I was losing my mind… and I was pretty sober all week. Sensory overload lead to near-PTSD. No, I didn’t actually lose my potato chips in the pool, but I came pretty close. It was a stark reminder that I’m a 42 year old marketing communications professional and not a 21 year old party animal (anymore). I had a lot of fun, I just went to bed earlier than everyone else, took my Centrum and put in my ear plugs.
Seeing jumps on our app and website every time crowds were at the stage was intriguing. Meeting tons of our fans and musicians in person and shaking hands and interacting was amazing. Seeing our CEO’s face while watching approximately 2,500 crazy kids dance around our TicketSwap Music Box every night was priceless.
Without further adieu, you should really watch our aftermovie now. It’s so fun. Sziget, until next year. Thank you for blowing our minds.
