SET POST 9: Public Relations

Fyre Festival’s purpose was “to provide access to celebrity performers to anyone who wished to book a performer” (Gonzalez, 2019). The organisers envisioned it to be a festival on par with or greater than established festivals like Coachella or Glastonbury, promoting the message ‘on the boundaries of impossible’ – where common people to enjoy a star-studded weekend, to party and mingle with celebrities. The target audience of the festival were millennials and followers of influencers like models Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid. The stakeholders: fyre festival goers, vendors, performing artists, investors, influencers and the main organisers Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule. The festival was heavy on influencer and social media marketing – the promotional video that included celebrities like Bella Hadid and Hailey Bieber partying on a private beach, in addition to the advertising by top tier influencers made the festival go viral. Fyre Festival was supposed to take place from April to May 2017.

The organisers of Fyre Festival tapped onto the idea of ‘fear of missing out’ (FOMO) – something that has a very big impact on millennials currently. Presenting the idea of a luxurious festival, their target audience – millennials – would surely be tempted at the thought of showing off this opulent lifestyle on social media. Their marketing tactics were definitely successful with getting influencers to leverage the festival, to the point where ‘people were able to buy into something that wasn’t even built yet. And pay $12,000 for it too’ (Chia, 2017). But after being exposed as a fraud, there were no instances of reactive public relations by the organisers in which they were supposed to ‘react or respond to a public relations issue or problem’ (Chorazy, 2020). There was no form of communication like a press statement to apologise to the stakeholders or address the measures that Fyre Festival would take to mitigate the situation. Fyre Festival went viral on social media, with users asking to boycott the festival. The festival just went full circle on social media – first going viral on it for being the next big festival, then going viral again for being a total fraud.

Gonzalez, E. 2019, PR Takeaways from the Fyre Festival Fiasco, Public Relations Society of America (PRSSA), viewed 2 March 2020,<http://progressions.prssa.org/index.php/2019/02/22/pr-takeaways-from-the-fyre-festival-fiasco/>

Chia, F. 2017, Fyre Festival: The great social media experiment, Medium, viewed 1 March 2020, <https://medium.com/@feliciachia/fyre-festival-the-great-social-media-experiment-c78e52839245>

Chorazy, E. 2020 ‘COMM2733_2020_Class 9 Seminar_ Public Relations. pdf‘, COMM2733, RMIT University, viewed 1 March 2020, <https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/70338/files/10824075/download?wrap=1>