9 Things Drinks Brands Must Consider When Activating At Festivals

Having worked in the festival market for eight years I wanted to share some thoughts on how drink brands can deliver a successful brand activation with promoters.

Drinks brand activation at festivals can be very successful but marketing teams should tread carefully.

I had close hand experience for many years as a bars director for a volume bar operator at some of the UK’s most respected festivals including Houghton, Gala, Gottwood, Farm Festival among others.

This gave me a unique insight into how drink brands and festivals work together, particularly as I had no commercial interest in how these partnerships worked out.

What I saw was many things holding back the success of these partnerships.

There’s a lack of transparency and a definite feeling of uncollaborative negotiations as both sides don’t tend to put effort into finding out what the other party’s priorities are.

That is not to paint an entirely gloomy outlook.

When a drink brand and festival partnership is done well it can have an incredible ROI, leave all parties happy and build brand equity with consumers.

But to get that you need to know how it works.

This post is for brands looking to activate at festivals or seasoned brands who want an inside perspective.
If I owned a drink brand and wanted to include festival activation in my strategy, these are 9 things I would consider:

1. What Are The Right Festivals For Your Brand?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve witnessed partnerships that just don’t work because the brand team haven’t done their homework on the festival audience.

It’s so obvious that it shouldn’t even be on the list but I have to include it as I’ve seen some very expensive car crashes before.

Marketing 101 – know your audience and activate where this audience is. There will be brand managers scoffing at me mentioning this but I can think of several well-funded brands that have been at the wrong events and make big net losses because the audience was not interested.

So the advice – make sure you really understand the festival’s audience and is it a no-brainer audience fit for your brand?

2. A Successful Partnership is Two Way

A festival partnership is a business transaction. And in business, it’s important that all parties are happy with the value exchange. This was sometimes completely disregarded in partnership negotiations.

Drink Brands – festivals are INCREDIBLY costly to deliver and festivals struggle to break even. An understanding of this commercial struggle and empathy for it will be beneficial in brokering a deal that works for everyone.

Festivals/Promoters – drink brands are not a bank to be raided. Set fair listing fees and understand that if a drink brand bombs financially or from a marketing perspective at your show you will never see them again. What’s more, the industry is small and burnt brands talk.

3. Does Your Brand Have ADEQUATE Distribution?

This is for nascent brands. Do not activate at festivals without solid distribution. Yep, this also happens all the time. Literally, what is the point in building consumer awareness without having the long tail benefit of the consumer being able to purchase the product in retail/hospitality?

I get it, new brands want to make a splash, build content, show prospective accounts that they are a brand that invests and gets the buzz of seeing your brand come to life.

This is all very well but please DO NOT activate at festivals without your distribution in place – it’s a waste of resources.

4. Structuring the Partnership Deal

Ok, so this is a big point and one which probably deserves a thousand words. I’ll try and break it down.

Understand the costs – listing fees, activating fees, moving stock/assets etc. What is a worst-case estimate of the total cost for your brand to be at this festival and what sales do you need to achieve to break even at a minimum? Essentially a P&L. Do it please as costs can ESCALATE.

With this knowledge, you can structure your deal confidently and negotiate better on terms.

Things to remember in the deal:

• Activating/brand assets have a value to festival (eg bars/cups etc)
• Brands providing staff has a value
• Your brand equity has a value to festivals (for raising profile)
• Stock direct or via a distributer has an impact
• Sale or return/damaged stock has an impact
• Is it a profit share/are you keeping the cash/festival keeps all cash – all has an impact.

Do your numbers and know the landscape so you can get a deal that works for everyone. If you can do some fee upfront and some post event based on the deal KPI’s being hit.

5. Get The Category Data

This is a biggie. Check the sales data from the festival for your category and factor in that this may have some creative accounting on the numbers – always take it with a pinch of salt.

As a rough guideline (this obvs changes from festival to festival):

Draught Products: 50% total sales
Water 15% Total sales
Vodka: 10% Total Sales
Wine : 10% Total Sales
Everything Else: 15%

NB: outlying brands such as whisky, gins, brandies etc do not tend to sell well at mainstream festivals.

Getting category data to prove volumes is essential before signing on the dotted line so you know your brand has the potential to hit the numbers you need to.

6. Setting Up For Success

Brand activation is such an important part of the marketing landscape but it doesn’t always hit the mark with its fundamental objective – connecting with consumers. Most of us have been to festivals and we all understand they are big, busy and it is hard to cut through the noise as a brand.

Focusing on how you might connect with a festivalgoer is key. On activation DJs, photo ops, classes or just a great place to chill out and get away from it all can help drive footfall and get a good average dwell time.

This is where the skill of great brand activation comes from – it’s strategic and understands the brand’s core messaging, audience and festival programme. It is then developed with this in mind to maximise it.

I’ve seen a lot of bad brand activation this summer – big budget, glossy activations that have just forgotten about the consumers.

Otherwise, as a brand, you also need to factor in your metrics. What are the objectives and what are the KPIs? Set these prior to the campaign so you can measure success and demonstrate it – the key to successful marketing.

7. Who Is Running The Activation – Brand or Festival?

If I owned a brand or was responsible for it, I would never let a festival operate the bar on my behalf, with the exception of draught or soft products. Any spirits brands out there—do not let this happen.

Spirits activations tend to lean toward signature missed drinks, and festival staff just do not have the skill, brand knowledge, or care to make your brand show up right to consumers.

I know this as I have seen it countless times.

Brands rely on that pivotal first consumer engagement and if it’s with a badly made drink you have lost them forever.
If the festival insists on staffing it – make sure you get assurances on the staff quality and experience working with products like yours.

8. A Note On Stock

Festivals are wet and dirty. Make sure as a brand you are communicating upfront about protecting stock for resale. Damaged stock cannot be sold and can get very expensive.

If you are running the bars yourself or via an agency ensure you have stock security and protection against damage at the top of your agenda. This seems a minor point but damaged stock can run into the thousands post-event with no accountability anywhere for it. When that happens the brand suffers.

9. Leverage Your opportunity

Make sure you sweat the opportunity. Drive your content creation across the site. Run competitions to collect data. Do some sampling across the site to drive incremental sales (make sure this is squared away with the festival in the contractual stage).

The point is festivals are a big investment so try and squeeze the outlying benefits out of it for your brand so you can truly maximise your ROI.

Conclusion

These are just a few personal learnings I have from working with brands and festivals for so long. When it comes to brand activation at festivals, there is a really big picture to consider and truly well delivered brand activation and generates ROI for thr brand should be applauded as it’s not easy.

Hopefully, these pointers give some food for thought to brands when planning in festival activations for 2025.

If anything here resonated with you or you have any questions regarding drinks brand partnerships with festivals my doors are wide open – tom@wildetoast.co.uk