THE PR SHOP

BY DAVID BULLARD, CFEE

WHAT’S MY NAME? THIS YEAR, MAKE YOUR PATRONS YOUR STARS

If social media has taught us nothing else, it’s this: People love to see themselves. Before the cellphone, the pictures of your trip to the Grand Canyon or the Leaning Tower of Pisa would consist of pictures of the Grand Canyon or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Now, they’re pictures of those landmarks with the picture taker’s face front and center. A caption that used to say, “Look at this magnificent canyon” is now “Look at me, at this magnificent canyon, half-obscured by my face.”

We humans love a great many things, but we love ourselves most of all.

If that’s the case, then why aren’t we making more use of our festival attendees in our marketing and advertising? People love our events. They look forward to them, put reminders in their calendars, buy tickets ahead of time. When they’re with us, they post photos and videos of themselves having a great time.

There are lots of ways, large and small, to have your patrons help you do the hard work of convincing others to come. You can go big and make them the theme of all of your marketing and advertising for the year. You can go smaller and make them a secondary theme or an element of the main theme. Or you can build small elements or a single short-run sub-campaign around them. How?

You can think ahead and ask people at your festival why they love it so you can use it in the future. For our 2022 campaign, we started at the 2021 event, videotaping lots of people in order to get some great reactions and comments. (You can see one of the TV spots HERE)

You don’t need to work a year ahead, though, and it doesn’t take a big budget to make it work. That’s because the opinions and images of your happiest customers are all around you – you just have to round them up.

Social Media: You’re likely already monitoring what people say and show about you on your social channels. Ask for permission to use the best stuff.

Contests: We’ve had great success with contests on our social channels in which we ask people to post a favorite photo or write or videotape a great memory. You could create a f social media has taught us nothing else, it’s this: People love to see themselves. Before the cellphone, the pictures of your trip to the Grand Canyon or the Leaning Tower of Pisa would consist of pictures of the Grand Canyon or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.contest at your event, like a one-day photo competition, to get submissions of great photos that you can then use. People love to enter contests and win something.

Surveys: Most of you do some kind of survey of your patrons after the event is over. Make sure there are a couple of open-ended questions there that can yield some good material.

Review Sites: You are almost certain to find some great reviews of your event at places such as TripAdvisor and Google. They make nice blockquote graphics for your social media or quotes to lay over photos or video for social media.

Your Own Archives: If you’re keeping a photo and video archive, use those archived elements to draw out more comments and stories, to keep the drumbeat going all year. Do a Flashback Friday or repost an older post to Remember When in order to draw out usable comments.

One of the benefits of using real people in your social media marketing is that those people will be thrilled to be seen and are likely to share your posts on their own pages.

Note that you should get permission from people you intend to use. If you’re videotaping them, disclose it ahead of time. You can also post signs at entrances or disclose on online tickets noting that taping for marketing purposes is happening. Ask permission to reuse anything posted to a person’s social account. Disclose in a contest that entries may be used for marketing purposes.

People like to see themselves and like to know that your event is for someone like them. You can go big or go small with the plan to feature your customers in your marketing, but you can’t go wrong.

Dave Bullard is the Public Relations and Marketing Manager for The Great New York State Fair in Syracuse, the nation’s first and oldest state fair, dating to 1841. He has spent his entire life in and around media, spending many years in print, radio, TV and online media in addition to running a solo PR, marketing and video production business and founding one of the nation’s first online-only local news publications in 1999.