Music fans embrace corporate branding

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Tags: discovery, journalism and communication, winter-2009

A UQ researcher has gone backstage to some of Australia’s biggest music festivals to discover what makes them tick.

Screamfeeder perform during the Pig City concert at UQ in 2007

And the answer is the corporate dollar, but unlike days gone by, today’s music fans are comfortable with that situation.

Dr Nic Carah, a lecturer within UQ’s School of Journalism and Communication, studied the way corporations use music festivals to help build their brands, finding that, rather than alienating young people, these branding practices were embraced.

“Instead of being seen as an outsider of youth culture, they gain authenticity by being part of these events,” Dr Carah said.

He said while in the past some of these strategies may have been looked upon as suspicious, young people today understood marketing practices and accepted them as part of festival culture.

“Young people aren’t fooled by these tactics, they don’t get sucked in by them,” he said.

He said events such as the V Festival – a very overt branding exercise – were acceptable as long as there was value in it for the concert goer.

“If Virgin brings popular bands to a festival, then the audience is comfortable to use their phones and cameras to send texts and pictures to giant branded screens,” he said.

“The audience perceive they get something and the company develops brand value by associating itself with such an event.”

Dr Carah is working on a book about his research to be titled Pop Brands: branding, popular music and young people, which is expected to be published next year.

By Andrew Dunne

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