Monday, August 11, 2008

Virgin Mobile Fest Greens Technologic

I did not get a chance to blog at all this past weekend due to the Virgin Mobile Festival that I worked at.

I thought I would share some of the things that worked and some things that didn't work.

The festival wanted to focus on being green and eco-friendly. At the same time, they want to increase brand awareness by associating themselves with many non-profit organization and music. I felt they did a fairly good job at this but they lacked in some areas. For example, they did not train or inform their event staff of everything that was happening. (I found this out when I was passing out free sunscreen. This woman (an event goer) thanked me and mentioned that she wished she had known there was free sunscreen earlier. This was due to the fact that a 15yr old staff member told her there was no sunscreen to be found throughout the concert venue and another staff member told her there was NO FIRST AID! When has there ever been a music festival with NO FIRST AID!) They did not clarify what type of trash was designated for the different recycling bins. The initiative to recycle at the event was not prominent and the music line-up was poorly done. (They spelled Kanye West's name as "KAYNE" West. How does that happen!?!? As well as all the best bands were playing at the same time and at opposite sides).

There are many ways they could have fixed these problems but it was only their third year holding this music festival. I should say some things they did right.

The use of eco-friendly technologies such as recharging your phone, camera or Ipod via bike was very convenient. They had a Dell Dome where people could make their own buttons, T-shirts and use computers to sign up for Buzzd (a new social networking service like Twitter and Yelp.)

Real quick rant on Buzzd: It is described as a "location-sensitive entertainment
listings service with branded editorial and real-time user generated content on
the mobile device.'Your city, in real-time,' buzzd allows consumers to know
what's happening at any venue right now, rate events, and connect with friends
and people in the area." I can see how this could beat Yelp but they really need
to keep pushing it. They need to get more publicity if they want to beat their
competitors. When I heard about the service I automatically thought it was another social network trying to make it big. It did not strike me as a "OMG! THIS IS SOO COOL!" It needs to offer more to users.

On that note, let me finish what I was saying before this post gets to long. They had a spiffy VIP areas that gave free drinks and had actually beds to sleep on outside. They had a Recharge Dome for people to check out the new Kyocera Special Edition Virgin Mobile Festival "Wild Card" mobile (texting from this phone made my hand cramp up) which they could use to make phone calls, send a text message to the concert stage screens or ride a bike and recharge their phone. They had a Refresh Dome for people to cool off and they had a recycling program where people could get stuff for collecting empty bottles and cans.

There were more positive and negatives that I could list about the music festival but I don't want to drag on. They should have integrated the idea of charging your phone by dancing . . . Maybe I'll make a list and send it to Richard Branson.

[picture via Mobilecrunch]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Going green seems to be a popular trend but if companies really want to more they need to make more than a half effort.


The recharging stations were cool, but not labeling the trash cans properly is a glaring error that again business love to appear green but don't care about actually being green