Fyre Festival: complete chaos, deceptive advertising and cheese sandwiches

It was not a good time to be a wealthy, hedonistic poser this weekend. Yes, we’re talking about the absolute car crash that was the Fyre Festival. I mean these people have more money than sense, who spends up to nearly $13 000 for a festival ticket? And doesn’t super luxury completely defeat the point of a festival? Waking up having to deal with being covered in mud, because the night before you thought it would be a good idea to wrestle a complete stranger for a drinks token is why we go to festivals. These spoilt little snowflakes have got it all wrong! Festival-goers were promised “a cultural moment created from a blend of music, art and food”. When sadly, the only cultural moment they got was the budget Caribbean meal they tucked into on their flight home. But this must have come as a blessing from the pandemonium they’d just come from – just look at what the poor buggers were given to eat!

Let’s also look past some of the superbly cringeworthy parts of the festival, such as calling their employees the “Fyre Squad”, and unoriginally coining the social media celebrities “Fyre Starters”. Not only will they lose millions of dollars reimbursing angry festival-goers, they also have to handle the probably staggeringly large cost of paying their Fyre Starters who have been promoting the festival on their Instagrams. This includes models Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner. April hasn’t exactly been the smoothest month for poor old Kendall, has it? As the catastrophe unfolded, the Instagram celebrities began to delete their Fyre Festival posts. What’s worse is that many of the Instagram celebrities failed to label their posts as promotional, meaning their underhand, deceptive advertising methods may be looked into by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). So what have we learnt?

1. You’re doing it all wrong if you are paying more than 300 quid for a festival ticket.
2. Promoting a festival is all well and good, but you have to make sure the actual event delivers what was promised.
3. If you are interested in going to a festival that Kendall Jenner is promoting, then sorry, you’re a knob.
4. Paid media costs a lot of money, the increasingly pale faces down at Fyre Festival are finding that out the hard way as we speak. And if you’re going to adopt paid media strategies, do so properly – otherwise the FTC will find out.
5. Spending time creating shareable content that will generate earned media is a far more cost effective approach.

Anyway, it is safe to say Ja Rule, the co organiser has a lot of answering to do. Let’s hope his pilot is, “Always on Time” so he can get the hell off that island! Fancy going to Fyre fest next year? Here’s the complete opposite of what to expect: