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Rocking the Daisies – 2011 & 2012

1. One-line summary

The Rocking the Daisies music festival used online monitoring to measure return on investment
(ROI) for sponsors and unearthed accurate insights to create a better festival experience.

2. The problem

Rocking the Daisies is a South African-born music festival that takes place every October in
Darling in the Western Cape. For festival organizers, measuring the success of the event is
crucial to the planning process for the next one. They ask questions such as: ‘How do we prove
that the event is increasing in popularity?’, and ‘How do we prove that this year’s festival is more
successful than last year’s?’

The problem is that measurement of sponsored events is challenging, as attendees are often
unwilling to interrupt their experience to respond to research questionnaires, and research
conducted after the experience loses its impetus and accuracy.

3. The solution

Enter BrandsEye, an online monitoring tool that captures organic conversations in real-time
across multiple online platforms, offering insight for both organizers and sponsors. BrandsEye
also offers a range of metrics used to track festival performance.

For two consecutive years, event organizers have used BrandsEye to track online conversation
before, during and after the festival. As a result, they can understand the festival audience’s
needs and preferences, garner insights in order to answer the most pressing questions around
the festival’s success, identify new commercial opportunities, and assist in assessing ROI for
sponsors.

For a festival this large, online conversation across social media, blogs, forums, press and
various other platforms begins six months (or more) before the event. For the 2012 festival,
BrandsEye began its tracking around May, and slowly watched the volumes of online
conversation increase as the festival approached.

All data collected during the period was processed and displayed on BrandsEye’s customized
measurement dashboards, which automatically updated in real-time. Additionally, users could
apply filters to explore the data and mine them for insights.

4. The results

This table outlines some of the metrics used to measure the Rocking the Daisies festival.
The overall sentiment towards the Rocking the Daisies festival in both years was
overwhelmingly positive. Although the share of positive conversation didn’t increase in 2012, the
percentage in relation to the volume increase was still significant. Furthermore, the share of
negative conversation in 2012 noticeably decreased, with a corresponding increase in neutral
conversation.

Predictably, 50% of the total online conversation took place over the festival weekend (4 to 7
October 2012). A more interesting question is: what caused the spike in conversation on June
28?
Figure 3. The announcement of an international headlining act is depicted here in a tweet

By inputting the date range (28 June) into BrandsEye’s filters, Rocking the Daisies organizers
saw that their announcement of an international band headlining the festival caused huge
excitement among consumers.

In 2011, the top themes of conversation had revolved around the party atmosphere of the
festival, being away and camping for the weekend, and tickets – prices, purchasing and being
sold out. In 2012, the same conversation themes were evident; however, Bloc Party was a
notable addition.

Figure 4. A word cloud depicting themes in the conversation around the festival.

In fact, online conversation on 28 June alone created 3 098 545 opportunities to see (OTS).
OTS is the number of potential views made possible by the total number of online mentions.
The same amount of paid media coverage would have cost R707 284.

‘Tickets’ were another top theme of online conversation. This was split between excitement
about purchasing them, and disappointment at not buying tickets before they sold out.
Additionally, people in other areas of the country expressed disappointment at being unable to
attend it.
Figure 5. A tweet requesting tickers for Rocking the Daisies.

BrandsEye also picked up all blogger communications regarding ticket giveaways, which gave
consumers one last chance to get tickets for the festival.

Figure 6. A tweet announcing competition winners.

BrandsEye’s data illustrated that 79.1% of online conversations took place on Twitter and 15.1%
on Facebook, with various other platforms taking up small percentages as well. Of this, 4.3% of
online conversations came from press sources.
Figure 7. A graph depicting the spread of conversation across platforms and press sources.

The high level of Interest from the press demonstrates the popularity of the event. When it
comes to proving a return on investment (ROI) to sponsors, Rocking the Daisies was able to
monitor usage of the sponsor names in connection with the festival. BrandsEye tracked these
keywords and was able to rank the sponsors by who was mentioned most frequently online.

The most frequently mentioned sponsors were the ones whose names were displayed on a
stage. Furthermore, sponsors with favorable branding and signage gained additional exposure
through online conversation.

Lastly, certain conversation trends have enabled organizers to identify opportunities for
specialist sponsors based on attendees’ complaints and desires. At future events, sponsorship
deals with car wash products and flu remedies (for example) could simultaneously benefit
concertgoers, organizers and sponsors.

Based on these insights, BrandsEye could offer Rocking the Daisies three valuable
recommendations:

1. Since the response was so large and positive, Rocking the Daisies should plan to introduce
more international content at future festivals, based on the hype it creates.

2. Because of the high demand and buzz around tickets, Rocking the Daisies organizers
could substantiate an increase in sponsorship and ticket fees in the long term.

3. Since branded stages in particular provided a higher ROI, organizers could increase the
costs of sponsorship packages or facilitate bidding for these positions, thereby increasing
sponsorship revenue accordingly.

Overall, an online monitoring and insights tool such as BrandsEye is valuable for making
appropriate business decisions based on real insights. This allows organizers to begin planning
the next festival with confidence knowing that:
· Festival attendance will increase, and attendees’ experiences will be enhanced.
 · Sponsors will achieve a higher ROI for their investment.
· Organizers can expect higher financial returns.

5. The bigger picture

Understanding your market is the foundation of every marketing activity, online or off. If you
don’t know who you’re speaking to, or what your audience cares about, it’s unlikely that your
message will resonate with them.

Market research will define the content you create in your content marketing strategy, which
naturally affects channels like email marketing, web writing, SEO and online advertising. It helps
you find your audiences on social channels by indicating where they spend most of their time,
and how they like interacting with your brand. It also helps you meet their needs by defining the
touchpoints they expect from your brand, especially when it comes to creating web and mobile
channels.

The more data you can gather about your audience, the better you will be able to optimize and
improve your marketing efforts: market research is an excellent supplement to the quantitative
data you can gather through data analytics.

Answer the following questions:

1. What were the key insights drawn in connection with the Rocking the Daisies festival?

2. How can the festival organizers take what they’ve learned to make changes? Suggest
some ideas.

3. Why would ongoing monitoring be important in this case?