The pandemic is a particularly challenging time for the events industry. However, this doesn't mean that marketing professionals can sit back and wait for the inevitable apocalypse. We spoke with Jakub Orłowski, Brand Manager of the Pyrkon Fantasy Festival, about the specifics of working in cultural event promotion and ways to develop a large-scale event in the age of coronavirus.
Interview with Jakub Orłowski
Magda Walczak: You've been working as Pyrkon's brand manager since 2017. Much has changed in that time; the festival has grown significantly, and attendance has increased by several thousand. What marketing activities did you implement to achieve these results? What changes were most important to you?
Jakub Orłowski: The hardest part, of course, was the beginning. I was given a huge marketing project, tasked with managing a large brand and a team of a dozen or so people. Initially, I commissioned a marketing audit to understand where Pyrkon was at in 2017. The audit results showed that a lot of work lay ahead for both me and my team – we had to prepare all the necessary processes, optimize the tools, and get the team up to speed in the new environment.
The next stage of the project involved partnering with Premium Consulting to develop a marketing and communication strategy for the Pyrkon brand. Such documents didn't exist before, but in retrospect, they proved crucial to the festival's development. The process of developing these documents took approximately three months and, in my opinion, marked a turning point in the preparations. Based on this, further changes could be implemented.
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The next step was to develop—or rather, refresh—the visual identity, aligning the offline and online presence. Then came the task of preparing the marketing team, and indeed the entire festival organization, to use the elements we had developed in all our documents. This wasn't an easy process either. It was an intensive period of training and live implementation of previously developed concepts, but it paid off. Thanks to hard, focused, and methodical work, we managed to raise the perceived value of Pyrkon, resulting in a 30% year-over-year increase in revenue.
MW: You're working on a very unusual project – after all, Pyrkon is a festival largely run by volunteers. Among your closest collaborators – the people involved in the event's marketing and PR – are also hobbyists. How do you ensure they have the latest marketing knowledge they need to be effective?
JO: You're right, it's an unusual project and requires an unusual approach. First and foremost, I allow mistakes to be made, but then I encourage them to learn from them. I try to talk to the team, correct certain actions, provide feedback, but I also simply suggest articles on marketing news or books worth reading. Many of the people I started my adventure with in 2017 have found jobs at marketing agencies thanks to the knowledge and skills I gained while preparing for Pyrkon, and I can honestly say that this fills me with pride and motivates me to continue working.
MW: Do you think an event like Pyrkon needs SEO?
JO: As you mentioned, Pyrkon is quite specific. Generally, events, those that take place once a year, are quite specific. We don't compete for ranking in Google search results, especially since the festival's name is a neologism. What we care about most are well-described meta titles, meta tags, alt text for images, and all the other things related to publishing written material. We focus primarily on increasing our brand value and delivering a product that meets the needs of our audience.
MW: Do you use marketing tools on a daily basis? Which ones do you find most useful in the events industry?
JO: It's definitely worth mentioning media monitoring tools, both traditional and online. It's important to know who's talking about our festival, where, and how. Broadly speaking, I'd say the most useful tools from an event marketing perspective are all kinds of tools that help or facilitate communication with attendees. These include tools for sending emails, scheduling posts, creating posts, and contacting journalists.
MW: In recent years, Pyrkon has partnered with large, recognizable brands. Allegro, RedBull, Lufthansa, and Cartoon Network are just a few. How do you convince such brands to collaborate with a festival for fantasy enthusiasts? Do they even know what Pyrkon is?
JO: Yes, the brands you mentioned know what Pyrkon is. They know because in recent years we've put in a tremendous amount of work to make the Pyrkon brand recognizable beyond the fantasy community. For corporate brands, Pyrkon, or any other event, is essentially just another platform for communicating with potential clients, and that's how you should present your event in a partnership offer. I really don't like the word "sponsors"; I always use the term "partner," because our relationship is truly a partnership. During working meetings, we often try to find a solution or a course of action that satisfies all three parties to the agreement. And I say "three parties" for a reason, because in addition to Pyrkon and the partner, the festival participants are also parties. All our collaborations with corporate brands also aim to meet the needs of our participants. They all aim to find a certain added value. I admit that the festival's theme isn't really the primary focus in this case.
MW: 2020 was a challenging year for the events industry, but Pyrkon still manages to keep its momentum alive. Can you tell us a bit about the online projects you're working on to make up for the lack of this year's festival for fantasy fans?
JO: 2020, and probably much of 2021, won't be kind to the event industry. Yes, we've all faced certain challenges that, until now, we either hadn't even dreamed of, or were distant topics that could have been addressed at some point. This situation forced us to reorganize all our resources and consider what we should do next. In a way, we're fighting for survival, not just physical survival, but survival in general—in the minds of our clients. That's why, over the past few months, we've taken several online actions aimed at both maintaining our communication with attendees and providing them with valuable content to compensate for the cancellation of Pyrkon 2020.
This is how the Digital Fantasy Library was created, in cooperation with the National Centre for Culture and under the patronage of lubimyczytac.pl. A virtual version of Pyrkon was also held, prepared in collaboration with Allegro , in which we tried to somehow bring the substantive content and perhaps a bit of the event's spirit online. It turned out very well; the published materials generated considerable interest, and we would be happy to continue this type of collaboration in the future, but of course as an extension of our existing offline activities.
MW: Pyrkon connects with its audiences through various channels, so you can monitor user engagement on a daily basis across all of them. So how would you comment on the opinion that some people think Facebook is obsolete? Do you see significant differences in user engagement between Facebook and Instagram? Which social media platforms do you think will see the most rapid growth?
JO: I'll answer your questions from the end. You're most focused on developing the channels where your audience is. Is Facebook obsolete? Based on our participant data, I'd say no – Facebook is still our primary communication tool, because our audience isn't early teenagers, contrary to popular belief, but adults with a stable life and finances who spend a significant portion of their time on Facebook. That's where they look for information about products, services, and just plain entertainment. But yes, there's a significant difference in media data consumption, even though Facebook and Instagram essentially belong to the same group, and it's clear there's a push to make them a single super tool. Instagram, on the other hand, is a much more visual medium for us; obviously, there aren't any heated discussions or exchanges of ideas between participants. Therefore, the content that appears on Instagram is much lighter than that on Facebook.
We're also using Facebook groups to somehow animate the Pyrkon community, allowing them to connect directly with each other, arrange joint trips to the festival, and so on. Many seasoned members help newcomers get started, explaining how it works, the rules, what you can see, and why it's so great. It's an echo of the old online forums, where we thrived in the past. Now we've brought all of this to Facebook; it's a sign of the times. We'll also be trying our hand at launching Discord as another platform for exchanging ideas, interests, and sharing information about what's going on.
MW: Pyrkon is now not just an annual event, but a brand with a constant online presence. Not long ago, Pyrkon even launched e-commerce! What was your biggest challenge when setting up your online store?
JO: Opening our own e-commerce store is essentially a realization of one of the elements Byron Sharp talked about, "Never go off air." The biggest challenge was launching the store at all, because no one in our organization had e-commerce skills, so we had to learn everything from scratch, on the fly. We treat it as a welcome addition to the festival and a typical merch shop that allows us to test certain sales solutions and see which gadgets our attendees most frequently choose.
MW: There's no denying the cliché that people learn from their mistakes. So here's a question you're sure to love: in retrospect, what would you have done differently regarding the marketing side of the festival?
JO: I would have implemented some solutions sooner than, say, two or three years after starting my work at Pyrkon. Of course, I would have abandoned many other ideas as flawed. But just as I allow the marketing team to make mistakes on this project, the management that employs me also allows me to make certain mistakes. However, these are mostly errors related to the application of certain solutions, and no one has a monopoly on knowledge or truth. Just because something works for someone else doesn't mean it will work for our festival.
Nevertheless, each year we try to implement at least a few new solutions and examine how they perform. Those that don't show promise or don't deliver the intended results are phased out, while those that do serve their purpose are developed. This creates room for new ideas for the next design year. This is perhaps the essence of marketing activities in general – you're constantly in the testing phase. Some activities are maintained and gently developed as safe measures, designed to ensure the strategic development and survival of the brand, while others allow for a certain amount of imagination.
MW: How do you see the future of the events industry? Do you think the pandemic will wreak havoc, or, on the contrary, accelerate innovation?
JO: It will definitely be both ways. Unfortunately, some events will disappear from the cultural map of Poland, some will surely survive in a modified format, but over time, new ones will emerge. However, people like to have fun and will always have fun. They will want to participate in cultural events, I have no doubt about that. I can say with a high degree of probability that in three to five years, those who survive in the market will look back on 2020 as a good year. Difficult, but good, because it forced them to take actions they might never have allowed themselves in safer times. And the solutions they implement and develop correctly will bring them profits even beyond the pandemic period. Since the dawn of time, global crises have caused some to lose and others to gain. Those who were able to adapt to new conditions usually benefit; after all, in our marketing, we say "adapt or perish." And this is precisely the biggest challenge for cultural event marketing today: to adapt to the current conditions, predict what conditions will prevail in the near future, and find solutions that will allow us to retain our customer base and meet all the consumer needs of this base.
Biography of Jakub Orłowski
Jakub Orłowski is a marketer with 10 years of experience. He has been involved in the events and culture industry since 2009. He is a graduate of the Poznań School of Banking. He is responsible for the strategic marketing activities of the Pyrkon Fantasy Festival. He also advises companies on building marketing processes.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- This excerpt from the introductory interview with Jakub Orłowski from Pyrkon provides a fascinating historical context for the events industry. Although the text was written during the pandemic, it offers universal conclusions regarding marketing and crisis management.
- Jakub Orłowski, Pyrkon's brand manager, talks about the professionalization of the festival's marketing through the implementation of a strategy, a new visual identification, and the adaptation of activities to the conditions of the pandemic, which resulted in a significant increase in brand recognition and revenue.
- Jakub Orłowski is an experienced marketer and event industry expert who has been responsible for the strategic development and marketing activities of the Pyrkon Fantasy Festival for years.
