Festival Season Kicks Off – Do Branded Flash Drives Have A Place
As the sun begins to makes its presence felt and the wet ground and fields begin to dry (and hopefully stay that way) the UK festival season scene starts to kick into life. This coming weekend we have the BBC Radio One Big Weekend in Bangor followed the following week with the Summer Madness festival on the Isle of Wight.
Of course the big ones are Glastonbury in June and the V Festival in August. These two events will pull in over 275,000 people alone and for marketers the prospect of getting this number of people from a reasonably tightly defined demographic profile in one place over a couple of days is manor from heaven.
But how best to market to them after all no at a concert will have the remotest interest in being bombarded with paper flyers, leaflets or sales brochures. So you’ve either got to get very creative and go with things that will be useful at the event like hats, caps, umbrella’s, plastic poncho’s, toy balls, beer openers etc. or you’ve got to come up with something that is immediately recognised as being “valuable” and will be useful post the event.
One idea is a branded USB wristband. These work in exactly the same way as conventional USB memory sticks but they are manufactured in the shape of a silicon/rubber wristband. The flash memory component is embedded into the wristband connector and the wristband itself can be produced in any colour you want and in a variety of styles. You can also print your logo or design onto the wristband or incorporate some element of your product/service into the design/shape of the wristband to come up with something unique.
The beauty of these wristbands is that they are not intrusive, they look sort of “cool” and they are incredibly easy to carry around because they just slip onto your wrist. The flash memory on the wristband can be pre-loaded with music tracks, videos, product information, links to web sites and so on. They can also be used just like many other wristbands are and that is to gain preferential access to events or shows taking place at the venue.
Its easy to imagine a scenario where the usb wristbands are given away to targeted festival goers who the advertiser then allows access to a free bar area or VIP area providing they are wearing the wristband. The same wristband then has the advertisers product information pre-loaded onto it with links to web site competitions and other events.
Use of the wrist band after the festival is over is pretty much guaranteed because people like and use memory sticks on a regular basis and a memory stick that can be carried as easily as a wrist band and is synonymous with a festival is something people will want to wear and be seen to wear.