Billy McFarland
entrepreneur
fraud
Fyre Festival
Fyre Media
influencer marketing
marketing
music festival
Netflix
The Festival That Was Truly on Fyre
This all started off as an idea for a celebrity marketing platform to solve the problems seen with booking entertainment. The prototype video shows a variety of different celebrities including models, musicians, personalities and more all available to book directly from the site.
Ja Rule, Co-Founder and famous rapper, was the connection to the Entertainment industry and Billy McFarland, CEO of Fyre Media Inc., claimed to have connections with investors, so they started to build their team of engineers to create Fyre Media Incorporated.
They had managed to develop a pretty good app and it had a lot of potential to flourish into something quite profitable. One of the people working on the project casually suggested the idea for throwing a festival for industry professionals to launch the start of the app. However, CEO Billy McFarland latched on to this festival idea. So, he bought an island in the Bahamas, Norman's Cay, that was previously owned by Pablo Escobar and it morphed into what many people know today as Fyre Festival.
While there was a lot of talent involved in the development and especially the marketing of the Fyre Festival, there was vague misdirection threaded through the entire process. Everything about this concept of a dream party on an island with the world's top models, the best entertainment, the best amenities all sounded great. However, the execution was poor and the concept lacked a real purpose and structure behind it.
The Chief Marketing Officer, Grant, had no previous experience with putting on events or musical festivals, let alone an event of this caliber. Also, it seemed that the founders Billy and Ja both wanted to have more fun rather than work. There were limited rules on the island during the promotional shoot and there was drinking going on a majority of the time. I think their biggest entrepreneurial flaw was their lack of direction and purpose for everything that was happening. For each step in the process, you should be able to have a clear answer to the reason as to why you are taking action. Even more so when large amounts of money are involved. I think it was a huge mistake that Billy was in charge of all of the finances because you need to have a separate qualified person to tell you when your dream is becoming too big for your wallet.
The one thing they absolutely nailed is their use of celebrities and influencer marketing. They somehow convinced some of the most beautiful and incredible models to be part of a promotional video shoot and used their massive social media followings to promote Fyre Festival. There was immediate press and buzz around the event and some of the most famous people in the world were talking about it. The proof of their marketing success really showed when it came to launch time. There were multiple different ticket packages available at various prices and they managed to sell 95% of their tickets in just 48 hours.
Even though they had sold out the festival, the imperative logistics that go into creating a music festival especially one on a small island in the Bahamas, were not feasibly possible within the time frame that was given. There were a lot of promises that were made that were completely unrealistic and with no intention of keeping them. As the date for the festival grew closer, it became glaringly clear that Fyre Festival was truly a hot trash fire.
In addition to the lack of direction that I mentioned earlier, the other major flaw that specifically the CEO Billy McFarland displayed throughout the whole process was his inability to take criticism and realistic feedback. No matter how great of an entrepreneur you think you are or how great your idea might seem, it is imperative to be able to listen to others and know when you are doing something wrong.
This whole situation is truly insane and part of me still can't believe that something this poorly organized and this publicized actually happened. While it is truly sad what ended up happening, the one positive aspect of this situation is that it shows exactly what not to do. All we can hope is that the immense amount of press and they very well done Netflix documentary on this truly disgraceful situation is a lesson to others and prevents there from being something of this chaotic scale from happening again.
Ja Rule, Co-Founder and famous rapper, was the connection to the Entertainment industry and Billy McFarland, CEO of Fyre Media Inc., claimed to have connections with investors, so they started to build their team of engineers to create Fyre Media Incorporated.
They had managed to develop a pretty good app and it had a lot of potential to flourish into something quite profitable. One of the people working on the project casually suggested the idea for throwing a festival for industry professionals to launch the start of the app. However, CEO Billy McFarland latched on to this festival idea. So, he bought an island in the Bahamas, Norman's Cay, that was previously owned by Pablo Escobar and it morphed into what many people know today as Fyre Festival.
While there was a lot of talent involved in the development and especially the marketing of the Fyre Festival, there was vague misdirection threaded through the entire process. Everything about this concept of a dream party on an island with the world's top models, the best entertainment, the best amenities all sounded great. However, the execution was poor and the concept lacked a real purpose and structure behind it.
The Chief Marketing Officer, Grant, had no previous experience with putting on events or musical festivals, let alone an event of this caliber. Also, it seemed that the founders Billy and Ja both wanted to have more fun rather than work. There were limited rules on the island during the promotional shoot and there was drinking going on a majority of the time. I think their biggest entrepreneurial flaw was their lack of direction and purpose for everything that was happening. For each step in the process, you should be able to have a clear answer to the reason as to why you are taking action. Even more so when large amounts of money are involved. I think it was a huge mistake that Billy was in charge of all of the finances because you need to have a separate qualified person to tell you when your dream is becoming too big for your wallet.The one thing they absolutely nailed is their use of celebrities and influencer marketing. They somehow convinced some of the most beautiful and incredible models to be part of a promotional video shoot and used their massive social media followings to promote Fyre Festival. There was immediate press and buzz around the event and some of the most famous people in the world were talking about it. The proof of their marketing success really showed when it came to launch time. There were multiple different ticket packages available at various prices and they managed to sell 95% of their tickets in just 48 hours.
Even though they had sold out the festival, the imperative logistics that go into creating a music festival especially one on a small island in the Bahamas, were not feasibly possible within the time frame that was given. There were a lot of promises that were made that were completely unrealistic and with no intention of keeping them. As the date for the festival grew closer, it became glaringly clear that Fyre Festival was truly a hot trash fire.
In addition to the lack of direction that I mentioned earlier, the other major flaw that specifically the CEO Billy McFarland displayed throughout the whole process was his inability to take criticism and realistic feedback. No matter how great of an entrepreneur you think you are or how great your idea might seem, it is imperative to be able to listen to others and know when you are doing something wrong.
This whole situation is truly insane and part of me still can't believe that something this poorly organized and this publicized actually happened. While it is truly sad what ended up happening, the one positive aspect of this situation is that it shows exactly what not to do. All we can hope is that the immense amount of press and they very well done Netflix documentary on this truly disgraceful situation is a lesson to others and prevents there from being something of this chaotic scale from happening again.
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