If you haven’t heard the story of Fyre Music Festival yet, you should because this one is hilarious and has a life lesson. Fyre was supposed to be Rich Kids’ Coachella in the Bahamas, promoted by top models like Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, and Hailey Baldwin and nearly 400 other Instagram influencers. OMG, as an instagrammer and model, I would have wanted to go! Why did no one tell me about this!? Ticket packages were “in excess of $104,995” and with bands like Blink-182, Major Lazer and some people I’ve never heard of, it would have been legend, dairy!
Fyre Expectation
“LOL this is legit”, “OMG LETZ GO PLZ” what could go wrong? Well, there are lots of images scattered around the web showcasing what actually happened, I’ve collected a few of my favs for you guys :)
Not so Fyre Reality
You see, a tiny island with tiny airports, roads and sewers can only accommodate so many people. Think about how much it costs to go to a real resort in the Bahamas for a weekend, where the buildings, staff and facilities were already in place. Then think about how much more it would cost to do all that on a beach in the middle of no where. Luggages were being thrown off truck trailers, tents included wet mattresses, plumbing was done in a hurry with plastic pipes, flights were wayyy over booked and by the time ticket holders got to the island, Blink-182 cancelled and the entire event was “postponed”. Then there were long sweaty waits at the airports to leave the island, you can read all about it but my favourite was this person’s verified account.
As you probably already know, the life lesson of Fyre was a typical story of how misleading marketing can be. Even with the information of the world at our fingertips, some are still misinformed and misled. Many are making this story of how hilarious it is to see these rich kids blow their money thinking they will flying to an island full of bikini models, jet skis and endless vodka shots. But there were also kids who really thought they were getting what was promised and scrapped their wallets for this. What caught my attention is how much of the promotion was purely done on Instagram. through was is called Influencer Marketing. If over 400 Instagram influencers were paid to promote this festival, then their marketing budget must have been in the millions. As me and most of my fans have already had this experience through online shopping, here it is again:
Just because she’s hot, doesn’t mean you should buy it.
When buying anything online, whether it’s clothing or festival tickets, think about if s/he has actually tried the product already. As with the case of Fyre, the models did not know what they were promoting because NO ONE HAS HEARD OF FYRE. This is different than promoting something they could try out in real life, like clothes or beauty products. Even then, I know my babes are too savvy to fall for fake pictures and scams. Thanks a lot Fyre, for attempting to kill Instagram marketing.
Would you have fallen for Fyre?
Comment below, be honest now :p
LOOOOL. I heard about this a couple of times on IG but since I’ve never heard of the festival before I completely ignored it. So sad to see them trying to kill the influencer business…