For the first Rocking the Daisies to take place Brian Little and his business partner Craig Bright had to sell their car and house respectively, to finance the festival. 10 years down the line and it’s spawned into a mini monster, a musical calendar highlight for so many and with a thriving production company in Seed Experiences to boot, their leap of faith has paid off in multiple ways.
But what’s really going on beneath the surface? How does one keep the cogs of a festival machine well-oiled enough to put on a smashing show and generate revenue?
I meet Brian Little for the first time at Arnolds. He’s sitting in the corner, eyes fixed on his laptop screen and he breaks abruptly to shake my hand and exchange niceties. We get straight into it.
Texx: I suppose where I’d want to start would be talking about the overseas bands that you book – how do you go about earmarking or pinpointing the acts that you think will be relevant to bring down?
Brian: There’s a mixture of factors, one of them would be acts that we like, our personal music choice which fits in to what Seed is as a company-brand, if you want to call it that, and of course what our fans are asking us for. If it’s for Rocking the Daisies, it’s acts that we feel fit what Daisies is. Then it boils down to budgets and to availability and availability is the key thing. We’re competing against the global pool and with the bigger artists we’re competing against some of the biggest festivals in the world, and yes our seasons are slightly different but it’s their off season so they’re in recording studios. So we’ve got a tough time in terms of when our season is the opposite to the States and to Europe and the Northern Hemisphere.
It can also be an artist’s routing, because at the end of the day we’re not a priority where we are, we’re not on the global circuit, we’re right at the bottom of the food chain in terms of our small market, our record sales, all these sorts of things.
We also certainly look at what our fans are into and we do that through data collection when you purchase a ticket. So you’ll see when you go to buy a ticket through our ticketing portal we’ll ask you what acts you want to see and that information we gather and mine it. So for example the RTD pre-reg poll where we had over 15 000 people submitting that info upfront. Milky Chance for example was number one this year and last! As the promotor you can’t ignore that kind of info.
Of course we look at social media but it’s not our benchmark – we do look at Facebook and how many fans a band has locally versus globally, we look at how relevant the act is, we look at their album sales, we speak to the label, we speak to the likes of 5fm or Kfm, depending on the artist.
Facebook and Twitter is obviously where our fans are vocal so it is great to engage with them on those platforms in a positive way.
We also look at what shows these artists are playing on a global circuit, what they’re charging, what they’re getting on the door price, who’s supporting them – so there’s a lot that goes into it as you can tell.
We also approcah festival line-ups with a different approach to stand alone shows. For festivals we are aiming to appeal to different tastes so wont throw all our budget into one act the way we obviously can for one artist tour.
And last but certainly not least is budget. It’s a huge factor and the exchange rate is really hurting our cause right now. All fees are in dollars, euros or pounds.
Texx: Obviously with an overseas act that you’re looking at bringing down, you need to have that radio support, you need to have that sponsor support –
Brian: Ideally, yes. But radio stations can be limited to only supporting acts currently on their set list. We rely heavily on word of mouth as well and regularly reward our most loyal fans who support us in this way.
Texx: How important is it to book a band that has a big single on current rotation on radio?
Brian: Look, it’s a tricky one. With festival line-ups it’s easier not to, but on the solo tours you need a good marketing vehicle and radio partners are still one of the best means out there in terms of traditional marketing. It adds credibility to the marketing campaign and it also gives you a wider voice. Obviously we need to look at a marketing campaign realistically and it’s gotta have a digital aspect and it’s gotta have all these other bits and pieces – outdoor, tactical – but ultimately radio is still a great means and an essential means.
Where I guess the trick comes along is, what sometimes our fans are wanting, against what the radio station is wanting in terms of a specific act, might not meet that criteria on either side. But we’ve got a good relationship with all the radio stations and I think we’ve worked well with them and we understand what we both want, so we don’t get too upset from either side if it doesn’t work for each other and then we’ll work around that.
Some acts we fully believe in, but they might not have a fully commercial appeal but we know that they have a cult following, we know that they have an underground following. And funnily enough a couple of times we’ve launched those acts and the radio stations have come around and said, actually we wanna support this, when they see the hype or whatever it is. So look, there’s certainly no formula and that’s our game, that’s our industry. We’ve been burnt, we’ve made money, we’ve lost money, we’ve had successes and failures but that’s, I guess, the ride we’re in for. It is a very risky business and is not for the feint hearted, that’s for sure.
Texx: Now let’s chat Daisies – it’s been sold out for the last three years, it’s reached capacity at 21 000. Can Cloof Wine Estate accommodate more people, because I would think that within your general business model, you’d want to be the biggest music festival in the country, you’d want to constantly keep growing and expanding. Are there any plans to do that?
Brian: There are, and Cloof has been incredibly accommodating. You know the first Rocking the Daisies that happened there, there were 3000 people and that was the second ever Rocking the Daisies. So 9 years ago we went to Cloof and there were 3000 people on the farm that year, this year we’re going to be doing just over 21 000 which is in line with what we did last year, so won’t be increasing capacity. We are expanding the land again though, last year they flattened a whole lot of extra land for us as well. So we have expanded that footprint exponentially over the years and there are plans in the future to do the same should the demand be there still. We wanted to consolidate this year however, obviously there are some logistical problems that things that we want to focus on. To be honest, I think we are the biggest festival in South Africa if I’m not mistaken, I think Oppikoppi and us must be quite similar.
But yes we would like to grow it, but our main goal in growing it isn’t necessarily to make money, our main goal is to become a global promotor in terms of a destination and putting South Africa on the map in terms of festivals. At the end of the day growth in our industry results in better acts being interested in making SA a regular destination on their tour schedules. So by supporting the industry, we increase our ability to continue to secure great acts and grow the culture. I think that again, as part of the strategy of Rocking the Daisies, it’s very much been where we’ve been headed the last 5 years.
We do take a lot of our influence and inspiration from overseas, we get invited to and attend a lot of festivals overseas as well as global industry conferences and we see what the global best practices are, and that’s what we’ve been trying to introduce to Daisies. Some of it’s been met with resistance but we’ve just gotta do it you know, things like back in the day when we separated the parking from the camping for example – that’s a global norm. And the secure ticketing process, while we understand there were queues at the door last year and we need to obviously refine that, as a sold out festival tickets are in high demand, which means fraud is unavoidable. We have to adopt an international standard, even though our countries infrastructure (connectivity) isn’t as jacked as our global counterparts, we still have to keep pushing to refine these new standards. The results were apparent in that our security issues were down by 70% and we were really able to manage it and make it safer and slicker from the back end and all these things are global practices and it’s where we want to take our brand.
Today we launched a Seed Experiences App so you can buy all our show tickets, discounted tickets, so in terms of innovation that’s pretty much where we are.
