Event marketing is a vital strategy for many brands, offering a direct avenue to engage with consumers, create immersive experiences, and drive brand loyalty. The core of event marketing lies in the ability to generate buzz and excitement around an event, which often hinges on successful publicity. However, publicity can be a double-edged sword. While it has the potential to propel an event to great heights, poor planning, misguided strategies, or simple miscalculations can lead to disastrous outcomes.
The failure of event marketing publicity can have lasting repercussions on a brand’s reputation, audience engagement, and even future event success. In this op-ed, we will explore some of the most high-profile and instructive examples of failed publicity in event marketing, examining what went wrong, why it failed, and the lessons that marketers can learn from these missteps.
1. The Fyre Festival: A Masterclass in Misleading Publicity
One of the most infamous failures in event marketing is the Fyre Festival, which promised to be a luxurious music festival on a private island in the Bahamas but ended in utter chaos. Marketed as an exclusive and lavish experience with top-tier talent, gourmet food, and luxury accommodations, the Fyre Festival became a cautionary tale about the dangers of misleading publicity and lack of proper execution.
The event’s promotional campaign, led by influencers and celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid, created an aura of prestige and luxury. The festival’s PR materials—slick videos featuring supermodels and promises of unparalleled luxury—set the expectation for a lavish experience. However, behind the polished marketing, the event was unprepared to meet even basic expectations.
What Went Wrong?
- Overpromising and Under-delivering: The Fyre Festival promised an exclusive and high-end experience, but when festivalgoers arrived, they found disaster. There were inadequate accommodations (attendees slept in FEMA tents), insufficient food and water, and no infrastructure to support the number of guests.
- Lack of Coordination and Oversight: The event planners were inexperienced and lacked theproper infrastructure to execute a large-scale festival. Despite having a celebrity-backed marketing campaign, they failed to execute the event on any level, leading to attendees being stranded with no refunds.
- Misleading Promotion: The PR campaign created an illusion of luxury and exclusivity that was entirely ungrounded in reality. This created significant backlash, as festivalgoers felt betrayed by the deceptive marketing materials and false promises.
Key Takeaways for Event Marketers:
- Set Realistic Expectations: Event marketing should be grounded in truth. Brands must be transparent about what they can deliver, ensuring they don’t over-promise or mislead audiences. Unrealistic expectations create major disappointment and brand damage when they aren’t met.
- Ensure Proper Planning: Publicity should align with the event’s execution. Event marketers should ensure they have the right resources, infrastructure, and logistics in place to deliver theevent as promised. Effective planning is key to a successful event, regardless of how good thepublicity is.
- Transparency and Honesty Matter: Avoiding the creation of false narratives or idealized versions of events can protect a brand from backlash. Misleading publicity may generate short-term attention, but it is not sustainable in the long run.
2. Pepsi’s ‘Live For Now’ Ad with Kendall Jenner
In 2017, Pepsi launched a controversial commercial featuring Kendall Jenner that sought to align thebrand with social justice movements. In the ad, Jenner was shown leaving a photoshoot to join a protest and ultimately hand a police officer a can of Pepsi as a gesture of peace. The campaign was meant to convey a message of unity and positivity, but the execution was disastrous, leading to public outrage and negative publicity for the brand.
What Went Wrong?
- Insensitive and Tone-Deaf Messaging: The ad attempted to co-opt social justice movements, including Black Lives Matter, to sell soda. The portrayal of a privileged model resolving a protest by handing a police officer a can of soda was perceived as trivializing real-world social issues, leading to accusations of tone-deafness and cultural appropriation.
- Failure to Read the Room: Pepsi misjudged the mood of the public, especially given the context of ongoing protests around police brutality and racial injustice. The ad seemed to trivialize thegravity of those movements in favor of selling a product.
- Lack of Cultural Sensitivity: The ad appeared to appropriate a serious and sensitive subject—protests for social justice—without understanding the complexities or implications involved. By reducing a protest to a marketing moment, Pepsi alienated potential consumers and activists alike.
Key Takeaways for Event Marketers:
- Understand the Context: Event marketers need to ensure that their campaigns resonate with their audience and are sensitive to the cultural context in which they operate. Understanding current social movements, political climates, and audience concerns is crucial to creating respectful and relevant publicity.
- Avoid Exploiting Serious Issues: It’s important to avoid co-opting or exploiting serious societal issues for the sake of marketing. Doing so can lead to backlash, as audiences will feel that thebrand is taking advantage of their concerns.
- Stay Authentic: The most successful event marketing campaigns come from a place ofauthenticity. When brands try to “borrow” or “ride the wave” of social issues to appear trendy or compassionate, it’s often transparent to the audience and leads to negative PR.
3. The Fiasco of New Coke: A Marketing Misstep
In 1985, Coca-Cola launched a new formula of their flagship product, branded as “New Coke.” Thecompany had initially intended to reformulate their soda to compete with Pepsi and appeal to younger, taste-driven consumers. However, the backlash from loyal Coca-Cola drinkers was swift and intense, forcing the company to reintroduce the original formula as “Coca-Cola Classic” just a few months later.
While the primary issue was the product itself, the publicity surrounding the launch of New Coke also contributed to the failure. Coca-Cola failed to anticipate the emotional connection that their customers had to the original taste and brand. In their marketing, the company overestimated consumers’ willingness to embrace change and misjudged how integral the original recipe was to the company’s identity.
What Went Wrong?
- Disregarding Customer Loyalty: The New Coke launch ignored the deeply ingrained brand loyalty that Coca-Cola had cultivated over decades. Customers didn’t just drink Coca-Cola; they identified with it. The change to the formula alienated a vast majority of consumers.
- Underestimating the Power of Nostalgia: Coca-Cola underestimated how much people loved the classic taste of its soda. The company’s failure to appreciate the emotional attachment that consumers had to the original product led to a public relations nightmare.
- Inadequate Publicity Strategy: While the publicity for New Coke generated buzz, it was largely negative. The company’s PR efforts failed to properly frame the changes as an improvement, and instead, they unintentionally created a sense of loss among fans of the original formula.
Key Takeaways for Event Marketers:
- Don’t Overestimate Consumer Willingness to Change: Whether it’s a product launch or an event rebrand, understanding consumer attachment and emotional connections is crucial. Trying to drastically change something beloved by an audience can backfire.
- Emphasize the Positive: When introducing change, marketers should focus on framing themessage in a way that highlights benefits rather than risk. Avoid giving the impression that something valued by your audience is being taken away without sufficient reason.
- Listen to Feedback: Listening to customer or attendee feedback is essential, both before and after an event. It’s important to gauge their needs and preferences so that your campaign aligns with what they truly want.
4. The Launch of the ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Ticket Sale Event
In 2015, Disney faced a PR crisis when they launched an online ticket sales event for the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Fans had been eagerly awaiting the next installment in the Star Wars saga, and when tickets finally went on sale, the rush to secure seats crashed several online ticketing platforms. The chaos that followed led to frustrated fans, angry social media posts, and damaged relationships with Disney’s most devoted audience.
What Went Wrong?
- Technical Failures: Disney’s PR campaign had hyped the event and encouraged fans to purchase tickets early, but the servers couldn’t handle the traffic. Fans were left unable to buy tickets or secure a spot at the theater, causing widespread frustration.
- Failure to Anticipate Demand: Disney underestimated the sheer demand for Star Wars: TheForce Awakens tickets and failed to scale their ticketing infrastructure accordingly. The publicityand anticipation surrounding the event created such a rush that the system could not handle it, leading to a PR disaster.
- Mismanagement of Expectations: The publicity created an air of exclusivity and excitement, but the resulting failures created a negative narrative. Fans felt let down by the company’s inability to deliver on promises, souring their excitement for the film.
Key Takeaways for Event Marketers:
- Prepare for Demand: When creating a buzz for an event, marketers should ensure that theinfrastructure, whether it’s digital or physical, can handle the demand. Failing to do so can lead to frustration and negative press.
- Manage Expectations: Publicity should highlight both the excitement and the limitations of an event. If there are potential barriers to access or availability, it’s important to address them upfront.
- Provide Solutions Quickly: If something goes wrong, transparency and quick communication are key. Offering solutions or compensations for affected parties can go a long way in minimizing thenegative impact on your brand.
Conclusion: The Importance of Authenticity, Planning, and Responsiveness
Event marketing and its associated publicity carry immense power—both to elevate a brand and to bring it crashing down. In the case of the Fyre Festival, Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner ad, New Coke, and the Star Wars ticket fiasco, the common denominator was a disconnect between the public’s expectations and theevent or product’s execution.
The lessons are clear: do not over-promise, be authentic, manage expectations effectively, and always prepare for the unforeseen. Event marketers must understand that success relies not just on clever publicity, but also on ensuring that the actual event experience aligns with the promises made. Event PR is about creating experiences that resonate with the audience—not just marketing gimmicks that lead to frustration and failure.
In the competitive world of event marketing, the ultimate goal is not to generate short-term headlines but to foster long-term trust and engagement. Getting publicity right can turn an event into a success, but getting it wrong can result in lasting damage to a brand’s reputation.