Camping music festivals are predominantly known to be popular among the younger audiences. However, as some festivals begin to age with their target audience, they have began to adapt to keep this audience, as well as expand to the younger audiences. They are doing this by creating family camping areas and family ticket passes. This is specifically targeting young parents who have been with the festival since it opened. Although this strategy is not yet popular in the United States, Ireland's Electric Picnic, as well as the UK's Glastonbury have been the first to adopt this new marketing strategy.
Electric Picnic
Electric Picnic a few years ago decided to create family passes and a family section at the music festival. Although there was major skepticism at first due to the alcohol use and overall rowdiness of music festivals, Electric Picnic decided to proceed with the idea anyways. They created a family specific camp ground and area for the children, known as Soul Kids. These areas contain child events for those under 12, including: face painting, family swimming, child performances, etc. In addition to creating these areas, Electric Picnic also granted all those under 12 free admission. The festival points out the Soul Kids section is specifically for those under the age of 12. By marketing this music festival as a family friendly event (primarily targeting young families), Electric Picnic has seen great success and sales from the young parents. In 2016, 55,000 tickets in total were sold for Electric Picnic, 5,000 of which were specifically dedicated to the family passes. The family passes were the first to sell out among all of the tickets. Online many call them 'coveted golden tickets' and a 'special event for the whole family'. Overall, the success has been astounding. It has allowed parents to relive their young adolescence by being able to attend the festival they grew up with, yet do not have to pay for a nanny and can have the whole family enjoy the experience.
Glastonbury
Around the same time that Electric Picnic started their family friendly area, Glastonbury in the late 2000's unveiled Kidz Field, which they call a 'festival within a festival' just for kids. This area is filled with brightly coloured costumes, arts and crafts, rides (such as mechanical swings) and performances (such as clowns and acrobats) specifically targeted for the children. In addition, similarly to Electric Picnic, they too are targeting families with children under the age of 12, which those under 12 will have free admission into the festival. There are also family specific camping areas. Although there is no data on their ticket sales and children specific passes, it appears that they too have encountered great success with this 'bring the family' mentality. Their children section, Kidz Field, has continued to grow and had many positive reactions from families on social media, as well as the press.
Reasons for Success?
Although the Soul Kids and Kidz Field may seem like great successes, that does not mean this marketing strategy of 'bringing the family' is appropriate for every music festival. There are several key similarities between Electric Picnic and Glastonbury that helped foster the right environment for their whole family events successes. First of all, both festivals have been around for awhile and have already established followings. Both festivals have followers now that have gone every year to their festivals and now have young families. Electric Picnic and Glastonbury both played on and relied on the nostalgia of their followers. The second key similarity is that both festivals have a lot of land and were able to have a specifically blocked off kids areas of the festival (for camping and for their activities). By allowing this, the children were not likely to get lost in the mosh pits of the normal festival, and there was overall a stronger sense of security. Another key similarity is that both festivals invested a lot of money into the children's section. Ranging from rides to performances, Electric Picnic and Glastonbury invested a lot of time and money into these children's sections of their festival grounds. There were constantly activities and events to keep the children occupied, engaged and overall excited. Without proper funding, this could have been a huge disaster. These key reasons contributed to the overall success of the children's sections at Electric Picnic and Glastonbury, and overall allowed for the appropriate marketing and event management which created the successful events that they became, and the overall festival expansion into this new and untapped market segment.