In the summer of 2011 Havas Sports & Entertainment led a comprehensive onsite and online study looking at fans' attitudes towards brands with respect to their involvement with music festivals across Europe. One of the largest of its kind, completed at six major festivals across six countries and involving 2,244 surveys, the study explored who music festival goers are, their leisure habits and media consumption, as well as their attitude towards and interaction with brands at festivals. The outcome of the study has given us some really interesting insights and statistics, notably that music fans believe that sponsors improve the festival experience. Festival goers appreciate brand involvement, and actively take part in their activations And so, sponsor brands that master the art of brand engagement to create activations that really involve music fans make the festival experience even better. We had to condense three months of research into these, so if you want to find out more about what matters most to festival goers and how brands bring festivals to life, please contact christopher.rapaport@havas-se.com

2. IN THE SUMMER of 2011 we LIVED, BREATHED, TASTED
02 | DIGGING THE DIRT ON FESTIVAL SPONSORSHIP

3. and sometimes even SMELLED FESTIVALS

4. HERE’S HOW WE DID IT:
6 of the largest European
AUG
music festivals 2,244 surveys
UST
6 countries
fans
UK from
30
GERMANY
POL
JULY AND
countries
500
CE
FRA
N hailing
from
JUNE
cities
IT
A
LY
SPA
IN
3 months in
2011
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5. Alongside a comparative Over 70 personal interviews 66 sponsor activations
study of non-festival goers conducted onsite analyzed including:

6. HERE’S WHAT WE WANTED
TO LEARN:
PEACE,
LOVE & BRANDS
ROCK’n’ROLL
CAN THEY LIVE TOGETHER
IN PERFECT HARMONY?
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7. Whatever the answer, here’s
THE INESCAPABLE FACT:
SPONSOR
without SPONSORS, most FESTIVALS couldn’t happen
…and festival-goers seem to RECOGNIZE, ACCEPT, and
APPRECIATE sponsors for this.

8. Let’s meet the FESTIVAL-GOERS:
54% are female
are under 25 years old
64% of them
ARE EMPLOYED
SHOP
NE
ONLI
They are TWICE as
compared to likely to participate
VS in cultural activities
They spend the only 25% for
HALF as much average non-festival goers
time watching TV consumer
(116 minutes versus
229 minutes per day)*
than their non-festival
attending peers
* Source: HS&E music study and Eurodata NOTA
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9. They’re COMMITTED. And last summer
They are VOCAL
(2011)
71.9% recommend
products and services they like.
37.6% think people come to them
for their opinions on products
and services before they buy
go to at least THREE other
music events a year
there were roughly
2.6 million of them
across Europe.

10. THEY REJECT BRAND ADVERTISING
Less than 33% Less than 11.3%
‘like advertising’ find advertising
interesting
Over two thirds
think advertising
is a ‘waste of time’
Only 20.4% think
advertising helps
when making
purchasing decisions Some don’t even
notice it (25% of fans
online and 18.5%
on TV claim not to
see advertising)
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11. But the GOOD NEWS is, they don’t reject BRANDS:
Festival fans are MORE receptive and aware
of brand sponsors than the general public:
Out of the 2,244 fans 65.2% think that brand
surveyed, only TWO partners actually improve
didn’t notice any the festival experience
sponsor onsite
On average they noticed 85% LIKED the activations
5.8 out of every 10 brands they visited
onsite
36% agreed they would
be more likely to purchase
32.5% would visit a sponsor’s product AFTER
the brand’s website as the event
a result of the sponsorship
They’re ACTIVE, ENGAGED
and most importantly VOCAL
about the things they LIKE.

12. FIT is everything. A brand’s DNA determines it
A snapshot of brand types’ ‘fit’ score – graded by festival goers, onsite*:
10
8.4
8.0 7.7
8 7.0
6.4 6.0
6 5.7 5.3
D
4
BRAN 4.2
2
Title sponsor | Beer | Radio station | Drink | Mobile phone | TV brand | Transportation | Clothing | Bank
In terms of recall, BEER brands score highest – often
remembered more than even the title sponsor.
But ANY brand stands to gain AS LONG AS they
*minimum 3 sponsors per category
master the art of BRAND ENGAGEMENT.
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13. SO WHAT ARE THE BIG TAKE OUTS?
• BRANDS MAKE FESTIVALS (they couldn’t happen without them)
• BRANDS CAN MAKE THE FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE BETTER
• THE 2.6 MILLION FANS AT EUROPE’S FESTIVALS CAN
(and should) BE YOUR BRANDS’ BFF*. They know what they
like, they know what they dislike and most importantly,
they VOCALIZE their likes and dislikes to influence their peers.
• Festival goers are CULTURED, considered, INTERESTED and
most importantly, EARLY ADOPTERS
• The audience is online, so BE THERE TOO.
*Best friend forever

14. Check list for success:
GREEN
STAND OUT! BE
BE BIG!
EEN
BE G
GR
R
EE
BE N
SIZE matters.
The biggest brand activations 74.4% visited one stand,
attracted more fans 25.1% visited 3 or more.
5% visited 5 or more. 80% of fans felt strongly
– a minimum of +40% that brands should have
a green strategy
BUT BE CAREFUL... 32.9% 19.2%
felt that sponsoring ... thought they
brands were were ‘tasteless’!
‘imposing’...
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15. Instigate LONG TERM
TED unobtrusive
RELATIONSHIPS through: UNEXPEC DATA capture
meaningful
ongoing
REAL
dialogue
I agree online
ENT
INVOLVEM but
relevant
experiences
WE U!
…and most of all, give them something
they’ll love to talk about

16. SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT: an interesting discovery
Their passion for SPORT directly relates to their
INTERACTION WITH SPONSORS
SOR
SPON
Fans interested in sport visited
over twice as many brand stands
on average (3.7 versus 1.6)
and remembered 55% more
brands onsite
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17. A FINAL MESSAGE FOR ORGANIZERS & BRANDS
Your audience is online,
WHY AREN’T YOU? 9.1%
BUT despite the 60.1% of
festival goers with active
Festival-goers social media accounts,
spend 220% MORE only 9.1% of fans heard
time online than about the festival via
the average global social media. So HALF
consumer. the festival audience
isn’t engaging with the
event via social media.
We discovered that fans
Festivals with an active Facebook heard about a festival
account stimulate twice as much via word of mouth
auxiliary online buzz as festivals (65.7%) – nearly half of
without. them (45.3%) hearing
about it EXCLUSIVELY
via word of mouth.
So they weren’t
exposed to ANY
other communication.

18. Be THERE, be UNEXPECTED, add VALUE to their experience
About Havas Sports & Entertainment | We’re the brand engagement network of the
Havas Group. We help brands connect with fans by putting people’s passions at the
center of the conversation. We do it through sponsorship, content creation, partnerships,
social media, and live brand experiences.
Who we are | Over 550 dynamic and creative individuals spread across 35 offices
in 20 countries. Our network includes Havas Sports & Entertainment, the Cake Group,
and ignition.
Our music expertise | From driving buzz for Burn energy drink to leveraging the
partnership between MTV and Hyundai, to blending extreme sports and live music
for Snickers, to handling PR for Virgin Media’s V Festival, and staging major music
events for Motorola, Vodafone, Axe, and Ben & Jerry’s, we are leaders in music PR
and music event production.
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19. and the fans will LOVE YOU!
Why we did this study | To be totally credible when advising our clients, we wanted
to go further than ticket sales, media coverage and gut feel by living the experience
alongside music fans to determine what makes festival sponsors entertaining,
memorable and welcomed.
Intrigued and hungry for more? | We had to condense three months of research into
this little booklet, so we left a few juicy bits out. Contact Christopher Rapaport,
Network Business Development and Global Research Manager via email
christopher.rapaport@havas-se.com or phone, +33 (0)1 58 47 84 28 or visit
www.havas-se.com to get the full lowdown, including those tasty nuggets we didn’t
include such as what matters more to festival goers, which brands really bring festivals
to life and why, and which ones don’t.

20. Havas Sports & Entertainment, ignition and Cake © All rights reserved.
All the content of this document, whichever the format used,
is proprietary to Havas Sports & Entertainment, ignition and Cake.