Social media coverage of Wychwood Festival

1. Wychwood Festival:
Voice Case Study

2. Voice
We are Voice. We are Oxford based social media consultancy servicing mainly
non for profit sector:
•We educate organisations on power and mechanisms of social media.
•We apply social media marketing and fundraising practices to help them
achieve their goals through personal relationships with supporters and donors.
•We help them to take the lead in discussions around their brand.
•We help organisations to discover the practical value of social media.
Vanessa Blake David Dixon Euan Semple Chris Denton Howard Lake Sylwia Presley Adrian Phillips

3. Introduction
Wychwood Festival takes place in June every year just outside Cheltenham. It
is a firm favourite on the festival circuit and attracts artists of the calibre of
Supergrass, Billy Bragg, Duffy and Seth Lakeman and has a reputation for
being family friendly. About nine thousand people enjoyed the Festival in 2010,
many of them regular visitors since the event began in 2005.
www.wychwoodfestival.com

4. Introduction
Like everyone else the Festival organizers knew that social media is becoming
ever more important and they wanted to find out whether it could really help
Wychwood. But what could social media do for them? How should they use it,
and who would do it?
So, Graham Mayfield, the Promoter of the Wychwood Festival, asked Voice to
help out. With the 2010 Festival. We helped him answer the what, how and
who questions. Along the way he worked out the why for himself!
Here’s what we did….

5. Introduction
Research:
Initial social media audit to identify leading brand ambassadors and potential
detractors; major social media networks of word of mouth around the event, as well
as general feedback.
Approach:
Acknowledge the value of personal stories behind the event (both of the
organizers, as well as of attendees). Present the event in personal, informal
way. Join conversations around the brand on-line. Establish, develop and use
social media presences to communicate, tell stories as well document the
event.

6. Introduction
Tactics
Pre-event:
•Social media and on-line brand awareness training.
•Support in management of existing presences. Establishing blog presence and
sharing its maintenance with the event organizers. Assigning various social
media channels to various representatives of staff.
•Initial engagement of bloggers
Event:
•Using social media channels to actively communicate with staff, performers
and guests.
•Documenting the event and feedback on festival with support of engaged
bloggers.
Post – event:
•Final measurement of general discussions, bloggers feedback and content.
•Recommendations for 2010/2011

7. General Insights
Majority of conversations occurred during the event and during the week after the
festival. Second day of event generated almost 50% less of conversations then the
first day. First week after the event high volume of conversations continues, as
people as still uploading their content (photos, videos, blog posts).

8. General WOM – Who?
40% of conversations was generated by
the engaged ambassadors. 30 % of
collected word of mouth was generated
by press, however we had no
information about twitter names of all
press pass holders, so this number
should be considered as an estimate.

9. General WOM
– Where?
When we looked at the types of social media where the conversations were created,
we have found that almost a half of those was uploaded of photo sharing websites.
Microblogging became second favourite activity of festival attendees.

10. General WOM by topic
Please note: due to the restricted amount of time we had to simplify the topics and add
photos and videos as a topic. Performances still remain the major topic of discussions.

11. General WOM by topic
Apart from photos, videos and conversations about performances people shared feedback
on the event, talked about food and camping. General topic stands for informative updates.

12. General WOM –
Sentiment
Majority of content is neutral (Sentiment 1). Both positive (7%) and negative posts (1%)
expressed personal feedback on performances, venue, food and camping.

13. General WOM - Intent
All of the post expressing intent were positive, however the percentage of discussions
containing intent was very small (1%).

14. Examples of positive conversations
http://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/index.php?s=0676c5b92a174589149e04474aabf826&showtopic=147596
http://www.irregularexpressions.co.uk/?p=149
http://www.facebook.com/GlosWhatsOn
http://www.wychwoodfestival.com/1292/wychwood-though-
bloggers-eyes/

15. Examples of neutral conversations
http://twitter.com/benweblight/statuses/15624440050 http://twitter.com/BMWavesBlog/statuses/15561109815
http://twitter.com/colda/statuses/15714977379
http://twitter.com/dutchcloggie/statuses/15546104029
“is back from a long weekend working
@WychwoodFest”
“is back from a long weekend working
@WychwoodFest”
“Ah i do love a uk festival. Thunder and
heavy rain even a few hail stones.
Luckily i was already in a nice dry tent
@WychwoodFest”
“Ah i do love a uk festival. Thunder and
heavy rain even a few hail stones.
Luckily i was already in a nice dry tent
@WychwoodFest”
“is stalking the sound engineer for
some impromptu education. Yay.
#wychwoodfest
http://yfrog.com/0vs5cjj”
“is stalking the sound engineer for
some impromptu education. Yay.
#wychwoodfest
http://yfrog.com/0vs5cjj”
“Wohoo!!! - band photos from
#wychwoodfest now up on
http://bit.ly/d7dkHd (more to be added
from Lisa over the days) - now to the
crowd pics”
“Wohoo!!! - band photos from
#wychwoodfest now up on
http://bit.ly/d7dkHd (more to be added
from Lisa over the days) - now to the
crowd pics”

16. Examples of negative conversations
http://emergencybunny.blogspot.com/2010/06/wychood-festival-2010-round-up.html
http://www.efestivals.co.uk/forums/index.php?s=0676c5b92a174589149e04474aabf826&showtopic=147596
http://tweetphoto.com/25988012
http://technokitten.blogspot.com/2010/06/festival-season-has-begun-with-wychwood.html

17. Examples of conversations with feedback
http://twitter.com/Arcadiankicks/statuses/15570882481
http://twitter.com/DaisyChapman/statuses/15619695149
http://twitter.com/HedgeWatch/statuses/15629880276
http://twitter.com/festiduck/statuses/15617634579
“@wychwoodfest thanks for having
me to play on @bbcintroducing stage
on Sunday. Really enjoyed the gig and
the festival.”
“@wychwoodfest thanks for having
me to play on @bbcintroducing stage
on Sunday. Really enjoyed the gig and
the festival.”
“3 days at #wychwoodfest on box
office duty, brilliant festival absolute
pleasure to be part of thank you
@Wychwoodfest”
“3 days at #wychwoodfest on box
office duty, brilliant festival absolute
pleasure to be part of thank you
@Wychwoodfest”
“Really enjoyed #wychwoodfest, great
music, amazing atmosphere, loads of
fun activities for the kids (+adult
children) weekend too short”
“Really enjoyed #wychwoodfest, great
music, amazing atmosphere, loads of
fun activities for the kids (+adult
children) weekend too short”
“Had a great weekend at
#wychwoodfest thanks to everyone
that come to see us.x”
“Had a great weekend at
#wychwoodfest thanks to everyone
that come to see us.x”

18. Blogger engagement
We have invited bloggers to use free press passes to attend the event and
document it through various social media channels. Half of the engaged
bloggers was chosen and contacted by Wychwood employees. Half of the
passes was given away through Wychwood blog and Twitter account.

19. Blogger engagement
The engaged bloggers generated 40% of discussions (465 units of conversation)
about Wychwood Festival. Most of those discussions was neutral as it was
designed to document the event. The bloggers used primarily Twitter, but
provided the event with photo, video, audio and blog documentation too.

20. Case studies – Connor, young blogger
http://www.wychwoodfestival.com/1292/wychwood-
though-bloggers-eyes/
http://charliebrownesblog.wordpress.
com/2010/06/14/summer-fun/
http://ipadio.com/phlogs/sylwiapresley/2010/06/06/Wy
chwood-6
http://www.youtube.com/user/Count0h#p/a/u/2/
d9TSFScBDNU

21. Case studies – Morning gig
http://www.youtube.com/user/Count0h#p/u
/17/Tdolg8W9lXA
http://ipadio.com/phlogs/sylwiapresley/Default.asp?page=2
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sylwiapresleyart/4674545492/in/set-72157624207733476/

22. Questions
1. Who should be handling social media?
2. What are the goals of social media strategy for a festival?
3. How do we ensure event is documented on blogs, in photos, video and audio
recordings?
4. Who are the bloggers?
5. Shall we pay them?
6. How much time does it all cost?
7. At what stage of the campaign is social media most effective?

23. Contact
If you have any comments or would like to discuss this document with us,
please contact:
Sylwia Presley
E-mail: sylwiapresley@nfpvoice.com
Mobile: 07850 138 178
Twitter: presleysylwia
Skype: sylwia.presley