Wychwood Festival:Voice Case Study

Voice

We are Voice. We are Oxford based social media consultancy servicing mainly non for profit sector: •We educate organisations on power and mechanisms of social media.•We apply social media marketing and fundraising practices to help them achieve their goals through personal relationships with supporters and donors.•We help them to take the lead in discussions around their brand.•We help organisations to discover the practical value of social media.

Vanessa Blake

David Dixon

Euan Semple Chris Denton Howard Lake Sylwia Presley

Adrian Phillips

Introduction

Wychwood Festival takes place in June every year just outside Cheltenham. It is a firm favourite on the festival circuit and attracts artists of the calibre of Supergrass, Billy Bragg, Duffy and Seth Lakeman and has a reputation for being family friendly. About nine thousand people enjoyed the Festival in 2010, many of them regular visitors since the event began in 2005.

www.wychwoodfestival.com

Introduction

Like everyone else the Festival organizers knew that social media is becoming ever more important and they wanted to find out whether it could really help Wychwood. But what could social media do for them? How should they use it, and who would do it?

So, Graham Mayfield, the Promoter of the Wychwood Festival, asked Voice to help out. With the 2010 Festival. We helped him answer the what, how and who questions. Along the way he worked out the why for himself!

Here’s what we did….

Introduction

Research: Initial social media audit to identify leading brand ambassadors and potential detractors; major social media networks of word of mouth around the event, as well as general feedback.

Approach: Acknowledge the value of personal stories behind the event (both of the organizers, as well as of attendees). Present the event in personal, informal way. Join conversations around the brand on-line. Establish, develop and use social media presences to communicate, tell stories as well document the event.

Introduction

Tactics Pre-event:•Social media and on-line brand awareness training.•Support in management of existing presences. Establishing blog presence and sharing its maintenance with the event organizers. Assigning various social media channels to various representatives of staff.•Initial engagement of bloggers

Event:•Using social media channels to actively communicate with staff, performers and guests.•Documenting the event and feedback on festival with support of engaged bloggers.

Post – event:•Final measurement of general discussions, bloggers feedback and content.•Recommendations for 2010/2011

General Insights

Majority of conversations occurred during the event and during the week after the festival. Second day of event generated almost 50% less of conversations then the first day. First week after the event high volume of conversations continues, as people as still uploading their content (photos, videos, blog posts).

General WOM – Who?

40% of conversations was generated by the engaged ambassadors. 30 % of collected word of mouth was generated by press, however we had no information about twitter names of all press pass holders, so this number should be considered as an estimate.

General WOM – Where?

When we looked at the types of social media where the conversations were created, we have found that almost a half of those was uploaded of photo sharing websites. Microblogging became second favourite activity of festival attendees.

General WOM by topic

Please note: due to the restricted amount of time we had to simplify the topics and add photos and videos as a topic. Performances still remain the major topic of discussions.

General WOM by topic

Apart from photos, videos and conversations about performances people shared feedback on the event, talked about food and camping. General topic stands for informative updates.

General WOM – Sentiment

Majority of content is neutral (Sentiment 1). Both positive (7%) and negative posts (1%) expressed personal feedback on performances, venue, food and camping.

General WOM - Intent

All of the post expressing intent were positive, however the percentage of discussions containing intent was very small (1%).

Examples of positive conversations

http://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/index.php?s=0676c5b92a174589149e04474aabf826&showtopic=147596

http://www.irregularexpressions.co.uk/?p=149

http://www.facebook.com/GlosWhatsOn

http://www.wychwoodfestival.com/1292/wychwood-though-bloggers-eyes/

Examples of neutral conversations

http://twitter.com/benweblight/statuses/15624440050

http://twitter.com/BMWavesBlog/statuses/15561109815

http://twitter.com/colda/statuses/15714977379http://twitter.com/dutchcloggie/statuses/15546104029

“is back from a long weekend working @WychwoodFest”“is back from a long weekend working @WychwoodFest”

“Ah i do love a uk festival. Thunder and heavy rain even a few hail stones. Luckily i was already in a nice dry tent @WychwoodFest”

“Ah i do love a uk festival. Thunder and heavy rain even a few hail stones. Luckily i was already in a nice dry tent @WychwoodFest”

“is stalking the sound engineer for some impromptu education. Yay. #wychwoodfest http://yfrog.com/0vs5cjj”

“is stalking the sound engineer for some impromptu education. Yay. #wychwoodfest http://yfrog.com/0vs5cjj”

“Wohoo!!! - band photos from #wychwoodfest now up on http://bit.ly/d7dkHd (more to be added from Lisa over the days) - now to the crowd pics”

“Wohoo!!! - band photos from #wychwoodfest now up on http://bit.ly/d7dkHd (more to be added from Lisa over the days) - now to the crowd pics”

Examples of negative conversations

http://emergencybunny.blogspot.com/2010/06/wychood-festival-2010-round-up.html

http://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/index.php?s=0676c5b92a174589149e04474aabf826&showtopic=147596

http://tweetphoto.com/25988012

http://technokitten.blogspot.com/2010/06/festival-season-has-begun-with-wychwood.html

Examples of conversations with feedback

http://twitter.com/Arcadiankicks/statuses/15570882481

http://twitter.com/DaisyChapman/statuses/15619695149

http://twitter.com/HedgeWatch/statuses/15629880276

http://twitter.com/festiduck/statuses/15617634579

“@wychwoodfest thanks for having me to play on @bbcintroducing stage on Sunday. Really enjoyed the gig and the festival.”

“@wychwoodfest thanks for having me to play on @bbcintroducing stage on Sunday. Really enjoyed the gig and the festival.”

“3 days at #wychwoodfest on box office duty, brilliant festival absolute pleasure to be part of thank you @Wychwoodfest”

“3 days at #wychwoodfest on box office duty, brilliant festival absolute pleasure to be part of thank you @Wychwoodfest”

“Really enjoyed #wychwoodfest, great music, amazing atmosphere, loads of fun activities for the kids (+adult children) weekend too short”

“Really enjoyed #wychwoodfest, great music, amazing atmosphere, loads of fun activities for the kids (+adult children) weekend too short”

“Had a great weekend at #wychwoodfest thanks to everyone that come to see us.x”

“Had a great weekend at #wychwoodfest thanks to everyone that come to see us.x”

Blogger engagementWe have invited bloggers to use free press passes to attend the event and document it through various social media channels. Half of the engaged bloggers was chosen and contacted by Wychwood employees. Half of the passes was given away through Wychwood blog and Twitter account.

Blogger engagementThe engaged bloggers generated 40% of discussions (465 units of conversation) about Wychwood Festival. Most of those discussions was neutral as it was designed to document the event. The bloggers used primarily Twitter, but provided the event with photo, video, audio and blog documentation too.

Case studies – Connor, young blogger

http://www.wychwoodfestival.com/1292/wychwood-though-bloggers-eyes/

http://charliebrownesblog.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/summer-fun/

http://ipadio.com/phlogs/sylwiapresley/2010/06/06/Wychwood-6

http://www.youtube.com/user/Count0h#p/a/u/2/d9TSFScBDNU

Case studies – Morning gig

http://www.youtube.com/user/Count0h#p/u/17/Tdolg8W9lXA

http://ipadio.com/phlogs/sylwiapresley/Default.asp?page=2

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sylwiapresleyart/4674545492/in/set-72157624207733476/

Questions

1. Who should be handling social media?2. What are the goals of social media strategy for a festival?3. How do we ensure event is documented on blogs, in photos, video

and audio recordings?4. Who are the bloggers? 5. Shall we pay them?6. How much time does it all cost?7. At what stage of the campaign is social media most effective?

Contact

If you have any comments or would like to discuss this document with us, please contact:

Sylwia PresleyE-mail: sylwiapresley@nfpvoice.comMobile: 07850 138 178Twitter: presleysylwiaSkype: sylwia.presley