The pandemic brought live events to a standstill and kept artists and brands from connecting with fans in-person for over a year, but we’re finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. As the push for vaccinations continues across the US, events are resuming — with some added health & safety considerations.
Brand experience and live entertainment company Superfly is back to creating large-scale experiences for brands, and will also be hosting its iconic festivals, Bonnaroo and Outside Lands, as well as cult-hit BravoCon in-person at full capacity later this year.
Superfly President and General Manager Richard Black sat down with XLIVE to discuss how the agency managed the changes that took place during the pandemic as well as the outlook for live brand activations as the industry settles into a new normal.
XLIVE: What has the last year and half looked like for you? How have you adapted?
Richard Black: 2019 was one of the strongest years we ever had as an agency. And obviously, in 2020, we all felt the pinch. We were really fortunate as a company because a lot of our work is already in the social and digital space. A lot of clients were really keen on doing the thing that we’ve always advised them to do, which was to basically create blended or hybrid experiences. The digital part was historically often cut for budget reasons, but the smart brands realized very quickly that the Holy Grail in experiential in terms of ROI is when you combine the physical and the digital. The next phase is that we need to make the digital experience just as good — if not better — than the physical experience.
XL: How has the pandemic changed the way you're approaching live experiences?
RB: Superfly was actually one of the original brands on YouTube. Bonnaroo had its own channel way back in 2009. So in a way, live streaming was always something that we were doing — we understood very early on the power of really amplifying our experiences. That has never gone away for us. I think what has happened now is that we've had to make some fundamental changes to how we create live experiences, mostly because the attendees and their experience has fundamentally changed. We're finding that things like FOMO have been redefined. Before people would be posting about living their fabulous lives somewhere, but now, it’s more about people at experiences together. It’s a sign of better mental health and wellbeing, and that we're coming back together, we're reuniting.
Tactically, we ended up having to write and think through how you put safety at the top of the creative brief. A whole slew of titles and protocols have been pushed into the agency world that we have to figure out and think through. We would always get a permit from the city of New York, for example, but we weren't always working with the health department. That has fundamentally changed. The big thing would be that consumer expectations have shifted. Our Covid safety protocols are frequently visited. People want to know not only about their safety, but the safety of our staff. We're doing an event now for a big brand, and they just communicated that everyone in attendance has to be vaccinated. Not every brand is like that.
XL: Logistically, how are you handling Covid protocols, such as checking vaccine passports?
RB: A bunch of us have been to events where we had our vaccine passports being checked, along with our driver's license. We are following all of those things but also really thinking about what is the best attendee experience. Fortunately, or unfortunately, like everything else in life these days, a lot of it is left to the discretion of the brand or event organizer. No one's necessarily policing this — we're living on the honor system. I do think that you will see companies like CLEAR Health Pass and others move more to the forefront. We’re also doing a lot of normal things like enhanced cleaning, but we’re fundamentally designing experiences differently now. Gone are the days of the welcome counter, and we're not queuing people in the same way.
XL: Are you incorporating more touchless tech and cashless payment options?
RB: I have an entire wall of lanyards, but I do think that there will never be another paper ticket. I'm pretty sure there won't be a lanyard. I think these things have gone away. Agencies and brands are always trying to push the adoption of new technology, and what happened with Covid is that the consumer all of a sudden caught up. They were forced to experiment and try new things, so now they're really comfortable with using their mobile device for things like payments and ticketing. And I don't necessarily know that it's 100% for health reasons — in our approach as an agency, it's also for experience reasons. We've always been trying to build frictionless experiences to get fans closer to the things that they love or to enhance their experience. What Covid did was it allowed us to make sure these things didn’t fall by the wayside. Now, they're mandated in a lot of ways.
XL: Do you think that consumer expectations have fundamentally changed? Or are these more short-term shifts?
RB: I think it's a big mistake to think that we ever go back to how things were. As an agency, we call this the Great Reset. This is a place where brands have the opportunity to meet consumers, because all of our loyalties have changed. The reason experiences work is because they drive an emotional connection. So there's definitely that need to be back with one's friends. But what we found in our Future of Experiences study is that while there's a strong desire to gather and celebrate, people are a little more discerning and intentional on how they spend their time and what they do. We also found that people are willing to pay more to make their experience even more epic. As we bring our experiences back, we’ll see people saying “you know what, I'm not going to go to everything. But if I'm going to go to this one thing, I'm willing to spend more for a better location, a better experience, more merch, etc.”
We’re blending the virtual and the physical together, because live no longer equates to in-person. We found that people will still be willing to consume experiences that are live, even if they’re digital, that will be filling programming for the rest of their experience calendar between when they choose to go to venues and other things like that. And that means that there's a new IRL emerging for us. There's a desire for safety and peace of mind, and people are now preparing for events and have different expectations on site. They now understand that there's got to be certain things in place that they’re going to need to do, and they’re okay with that. So we're just looking for creative ways to make that part of the experience. At Outside Lands, for example, Ranger Rick will be wearing his mask versus just putting up signs to wear masks.
XL: Are you seeing brands excited to come back and engage with fans?
RB: We're very bullish on the landscape, we’ve had a lot of brands that are reaching out to us to work with them. We’ve figured out how to bring them back safely, and how to manage the new normal. Our tolerance and acceptance of all digital channels rose significantly during the pandemic, but brands know that the power to create the best emotional connection comes from live. A lot of brands that we work with have large sponsorships and sizable portfolios, and they still had to pay those leagues for rights. Now they want to activate because they need to get the ROI back, they need to show proof of concept. And internally, in the C-suite of these companies, they are all fighting for dollars. CEOs may be questioning the impact of not having done a live event in 18 months. There's definitely going to be questions around that, and we’re helping brands navigate those discussions because we know that what we do works. It's well proven and well documented.