Fes­ti­vals pro­vide an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to engage a key tar­get group of con­sumers. At Glas­ton­bury, the UK’s largest green-field fes­ti­val, the onus is on brands to con­form to cer­tain val­ues. Eth­i­cal, envi­ron­men­tal, and sus­tain­able buisi­ness prac­tices are the name of the game, but should this be an indi­ca­tion of the val­ues brands should hold if they wish to appeal to mil­len­nail gen­er­a­tions?

Glas­ton­bury took place last week, with 175,000 enthu­si­as­tic fes­ti­val-goers con­verg­ing on a field in Som­er­set for a week­end of sun, music, and gen­er­al good times. The fes­ti­val, which has been run­ning for over 30 years, has grown from hum­ble begin­nings as a small free-fes­ti­val inspired by hip­pie and coun­ter­cul­ture move­ments, into a much more pop­u­lar cel­e­bra­tion of music, art, and con­tem­po­rary cul­ture.

As the fes­ti­val has grown, and media cov­er­age has increased, Glas­ton­bury has become a much big­ger oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to get involved with an event which now attracts crowds to match the pop­u­la­tion of an aver­age-sized eng­lish town. What’s more, Glas­ton­bury’s endur­ing pres­ence in the past few decades means that it has become a cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant event of the British sum­mer cal­en­dar.

Fes­ti­vals have become a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to embark on mar­ket­ing cam­paigns at a grass­roots lev­el. As Paul Reed, gen­er­al man­ag­er at AIF, said in an inter­view with The Guardian, “a pres­ence at fes­ti­vals can great­ly enhance your brand. It isn’t just a bunch of stalls burn­ing incense now as it was in the mid-’90s.”

Ethics And Authenticity

How­ev­er, more­so than for oth­er fes­ti­vals, cater­ing for the Glas­ton­bury fes­ti­val-goers isn’t as sim­ple as it might seem. For oth­er events, adver­tise­ments, sig­nage or a brand stall are often enough to gen­er­ate a reward­ing lev­el of aware­ness – but at fes­ti­vals such Glas­ton­bury, with its strong anti-estab­lish­ment roots, a young, large­ly mil­len­ni­al crowd is adept at rec­og­niz­ing the authen­tic­i­ty in a brand.

Indeed, the fes­ti­val’s most rec­og­niz­able brand part­ners are affil­i­at­ed with char­i­ta­ble and activist caus­es. Oxfam, Green­peace, and Wat­erAid have been part­nered with the fes­ti­val for almost 25 years. All three non­prof­its have helped define the fes­ti­val’s iden­ti­ty as a sup­port­er of activist caus­es, rather than a com­mer­cial enti­ty.

It has set a lev­el of expec­ta­tion among fes­ti­val-goers for an eth­i­cal brand pres­ence, so for brands who are look­ing to make their pres­ence felt, there is a cer­tain game they have to play so as not to come across too self-pro­mo­tion­al, and to get the fes­ti­val “vibe.”

Here are a few of the brands who were get­ting into the fes­ti­val groove at Glas­ton­bury. Many have per­fect­ed their tone and mes­sag­ing, and will have a promis­ing sea­son of sum­mer fes­ti­vals and events mar­ket­ing to look for­ward to.

Brands Getting Into The Festival Groove

1. Hunter’s Backstage Brand Building

Hunter is a Glas­ton­bury phe­nom­e­non. In the past few years, the wellies man­u­fac­tur­er has sur­passed all usu­al expec­ta­tions of how a brand can real­ly engage with fes­ti­val-goers, using celebri­ty influ­ence to set the trend for fes­ti­val fash­ion.

Ever since Kate Moss first rocked the wellies back in 1996, Hunter wellies have become the ulti­mate in fes­ti­val chic. The amount of press cov­er­age that the fes­ti­val draws, com­bined with the rock/pop celebri­ty glit­terati, has been an extreme­ly potent cock­tail, rock­et­ing the brand to glob­al sta­tus and desir­abil­i­ty.

As Bob Sheard, the man­ag­ing direc­tor of FreshBri­tain who man­age Hunter’s pub­lic rela­tions propo­si­tions, said “the back­stage enclo­sure is where the mar­ket­ing pow­er lies”, and Hunter have built much of their brand around this con­cept.

This year’s Glas­ton­bury was no excep­tion and the brand con­tin­ued their pow­er­ful form at this year’s fes­ti­val, once again putting celebri­ty endorse­ment to good use and “killing it,” so to speak, on the brand build­ing front.

2. EE’s ‘Charging Bull’

Mobile providers are a wel­come sight at any fes­ti­val, and EE were the stand­out per­former in the space at Glas­ton­bury.

Check out their “charg­ing bull”, which also func­tioned as a free WiFi point (enabling even con­sumers who weren’t on the EE net­work to keep in touch with their friends all week­end):

Have you met our #4GEE Charg­ing Bull? You’ll find him next to the EE Recharge Tent ?⚡?#Glas­ton­bury pic.twitter.com/dj1ewxUvMr

— EE (@EE) June 25, 2015

They also made good use of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote their EE Pow­er Bars, for which they oper­at­ed a hire and swap pol­i­cy to keep fes­ti­val-goers charged up and con­nect­ed all week­end.

Clear­ly, EE’s fes­ti­val pres­ence was a (social) life saver for many atten­dees, and the fact that they catered to con­sumers across net­works meant that they kept in line with the free spir­it of the fes­ti­val, and engaged a key tar­get group in their mar­ket, pro­vid­ing a ser­vice for con­sumers cur­rent­ly served by oth­er providers.

3. Yeo Valley’s ‘Yeogurt’

Yeo Val­ley Organ­ic are in many ways, a per­fect brand part­ner for the Glas­ton­bury fes­ti­val. The fam­i­ly-owned dairy com­pa­ny is based in Som­er­set, and have built a rep­u­ta­tion for being an eth­i­cal busi­ness; encour­ag­ing organ­ic farm­ing prac­tices amongst local busi­ness­es, and giv­ing long-term ‘fair-trade’ con­tracts with a view to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment.

For this year, Yeo Val­ley ran a com­pe­ti­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Glas­ton­bury to design a tote bag which would be hand­ed out to crowds at the fes­ti­val. The com­pa­ny nar­rowed down a selec­tion of entrants, before “[tak­ing the designs to] Face­book to let the ‘likes’ do the talk­ing”.

All in all, the brand man­aged to tie a engaged social media cam­paign, with a feel-good pres­ence at the event which pro­vid­ed fes­ti­val goers with a wel­come free­bie.

4. First Great Western — Serenading Passengers

First Great West­ern must be one of the more under­rat­ed brands to serve the Glas­ton­bury fes­ti­val, with so many descend­ing into what must oth­er­wise be rel­a­tive­ly rou­tine timeta­bles for the train com­pa­ny. While train oper­a­tors have nev­er been ones for mar­ket­ing stunts, this year the com­pa­ny made the qui­et move of putting on a sur­prise show for some of the Glas­ton­bury bound fes­ti­val-goers, invit­ing musi­cian SOAK to ser­e­nade trav­el­ers.

We had @SOAKofficial on board today for #FGW­Sum­mer­Tracks sur­pris­ing a few #Glasto2015 pas­sen­gers! pic.twitter.com/q5EJPCdX3k — First Great West­ern (@FGW) June 25, 2015

5. Water Aid’s ‘Loo with A View’

Wat­erAid have always main­tained a strong brand pres­ence at Glas­ton­bury, using it as a impor­tant are­na to spread its mes­sage pro­mot­ing safe drink­ing water around the world. For many years, the char­i­ty has pro­vid­ed free drink­ing water at the fes­ti­val, as an alter­na­tive to buy­ing bot­tled water and to sup­port envi­ron­men­tal issues.

This year, Wat­erAid added an inter­est­ing instal­la­tion to real­ly open peo­ple’s eyes to the issue of pro­vid­ing clean water around the world. The char­i­ty designed a “Loo with a View” to raise aware­ness of the uncom­fort­able truth.

The stunt was tied to the #MakeI­tHap­pen hash­tag on social media, which was designed to spread the mes­sage about the char­i­ty’s ini­tia­tive to intro­duce water kiosks around the world that pro­mote safe water and san­i­ta­tion.

6. Various Social Media ‘Brandjackers’

Yeo Val­ley and First Great West­ern weren’t the only brands to get involved with the Glas­ton­bury con­ver­sa­tion.

For exam­ple, the Tate sent this curi­ous Tweet which seemed to com­bine a weath­er fore­cast, a touch of art, and a not incon­sid­er­ably dose of brand­jack­ing.

Recog­nise these fes­ti­val goers? #TateWeath­er pre­dicts glo­ri­ous sun­shine for those going to #Glas­ton­bury this week­end pic.twitter.com/jxtQjoiQ1D

— Tate (@Tate) June 26, 2015

They weren’t the only ones: Lego

Mini­lan­ders have donned wellies & gath­ered around the Pyra­mid stage as @GlastoFest arrives at the Resort #Glas­ton­bury pic.twitter.com/8zjdYtwJU9 — LEGOLAND Wind­sor (@LEGOLANDWindsor) June 22, 2015

Easy­jet

Not going to #Glas­ton­bury and look­ing to escape for the week­end? Vis­it our City Breaks page: http://t.co/s0HC4OKp49pic.twitter.com/8aMOIwPWm9

— easy­Jet (@easyJet) June 23, 2015

What the above exam­ples show is that fes­ti­vals are a potent top­ic for social media, and that even join­ing in the con­ver­sa­tion can have val­ue for a brand.

Festivals As A Microcosm For Millennial Marketing

Fes­ti­vals are a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to engage young audi­ences, and a key con­sumer group. As a gath­er­ing of so many peo­ple, mar­ket­ing efforts at a fes­ti­val should­n’t be seen as an iso­lat­ed cam­paign, but one in which suc­cess acts as a sig­nal for brands look­ing to engage a cru­cial gen­er­a­tion of con­sumers.

In each of the above cas­es, brands that expe­ri­enced suc­cess around the fes­ti­val were able to bring rel­e­vance to their brand, either by cater­ing for a gen­uine fes­ti­val need (EE, Wat­erAid), or by align­ing them­selves with the val­ues of the con­sumers they were mar­ket­ing to.

Eth­i­cal, envi­ron­men­tal, and sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices have always mat­tered to the fes­ti­val crowds. The only dif­fer­ence is that these crowds are now main­stream.

Yeo Val­ley is a per­fect exam­ple of a local brand that has built a busi­ness on these val­ues, with­out com­pro­mis­ing their integri­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness as a busi­ness. The brand has made the ethics of dairy-farm­ing rel­e­vant and appeal­ing for younger audi­ences.

Just think what would be pos­si­ble for oth­er brands that take on the chal­lenge of putting on a show for the fes­ti­val crowd.