Monday, May 1, 2017

Frye Festival founders scramble in the aftermath of ruined event

The fallout continues for the disaster that was Frye Festival.

The ill-fated fete, which entrepreneur Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule organized and several famous models promoted, was canceled after its first day. Apologies are flowing in after the Bahamas-based festival captured headlines around the globe for what a disaster it became.

Weather was a factor in damaging much of the infrastructure that was built, and then people started arriving. Attendees were left without places to sleep and little to eat and drink.

It became immediately clear that the festival was ill prepared. Tweets such as these started popping up:

Though the event was a nightmare for attendees, most social media users had no sympathy for those who were left stranded:

On Friday, Ja Rule apologized, but stressed that the problems were not his fault:

On Sunday, the rapper apologized again and announced that all guests were safe:

Model Bella Hadid, who helped promote the event, also gave a mea culpa for the role she played:

Vice News reported that Kendall Jenner was paid $250,000 to promote the event in a now-deleted Instagram post. She did not label the promotion an advertisement, as the Federal Communications Commission stipulates. Jenner did not issue an apology.

[RELATED: Keep your cool in a crisis with these tips.]

The festival promised to refund all attendees and offer them free VIP passes to next year’s event, but that isn’t enough for many of the well-heeled millennial attendees. A $100 million class-action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the festival-goers.

It cites "lack of adequate food, water, shelter, and medical care created a dangerous and panicked situation among attendees—suddenly finding themselves stranded on a remote island without basic provisions." The suit likens the experience to “The Hunger Games” or “Lord of the Flies.”

You can read the organizers’ full (and epic) apology on the Frye Festival website, but here are a few highlights:

[Organizers] simply weren’t ready for ... how big this thing would get. They started by making a website and launching a viral campaign. Ja helped book talent, and they had hundreds of local Bahamians join in the effort. Suddenly, they found themselves transforming a small island and trying to build a festival. Thousands of people wanted to come. They were excited, but then the roadblocks started popping up.

As amazing as the islands are, the infrastructure for a festival of this magnitude needed to be built from the ground up. So, we decided to literally attempt to build a city. We set up water and waste management, brought an ambulance from New York, and chartered 737 planes to shuttle our guests via 12 flights a day from Miami. We thought we were ready, but then everyone arrived.

McFarland didn’t issue a separate statement, but he outlined to ABC News how the organization is fixing the problem:

How we're solving this is first of all guests have been taken home safely on planes, next everybody is being refunded for their ticket purchase, and everybody is getting a comp ticket to Fyre Fest 2018, which is taking place in May on a beach location in the United States.

He added that the "Bahamian government was an incredible partner," but admitted "the task proved to be too large for the short amount of time we were trying to operate under."

Trey Ditto, chief executive of Ditto PR, says PR pros can take a few lessons from the debacle. One takeaway is to make sure you have the chops to handle what you promise to deliver.

“The organizer of Fyre Festival had no prior experience putting on a music festival, so from the client side, make sure the PR firm you hire has actually done the work they are pitching you and succeeded at it,” Ditto says. “From the PR side, don’t claim you can do something that you don’t have experience in.”

This applies to event planning as well as other aspects of PR, such as pitching and writing content.

PR pros should also know when to throw in the towel. If you’re getting close to a deadline, and it appears that your efforts are stacking up to be a disaster a la the Frye Festival, make the tough decision to cancel or extend a launch date, instead of pushing out a campaign that’s not ready.

Ditto says:

… It’s our job to tell them that the product isn’t ready and it will negatively impact them. Sometimes PR people are too scared to tell the client “no.”

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