Music festivals often portray a sense of euphoria; people attend in hopes of meeting others with the same musical tastes, gaining a better sense of culture, or even taking cool Instagram pictures. Those who attended the Fyre Festival had these hopes and many more in mind before their arrival, however the experience was quite the opposite.
Netflix recently released a documentary about the disastrous event and a behind-the-scenes look at those affected: attendees, the marketing team and citizens of the Bahamas. In summary, Fyre Festival creator Billy McFarland supposedly aimed to have hot personalities such as Kendall Jenner, Ja Rule, and Emily Ratajkowski being able to interact with attendees. He advertised yacht excursions, luxurious tent “hotels,” and high-end catered food. For upwards of $250,000 for tickets and add-on prices for excursions or upgrades, people paid a large sum of money to nearly be tortured. Upon arrival, guests found that their luxurious tents had been replaced with small, damp tents, catered food became cheese between slices of bread and the actual festival was not near the beach.
McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to forfeit $26 million. Many are wondering, however, if influencers who promoted the festival should be held accountable.
While influencers involved had no idea that the event was going to be a PR nightmare, lawsuits are being filed against them for false advertising. The main reason consumers spent such a large sum of money to attend the festival was due to the influencers who said they were attending. These influencers posted about the festival on social media, which was successful in getting people to purchase tickets.
This generally isn’t an issue, as influencer marketing has spread rapidly, however, the reason why this instance is at fault is because numerous influencers did not mention that their posts on social media were ads or sponsored by the festival. This may seem unproblematic but it is proven that influencer marketing is successful because followers tend to look up to influencers and feel as though they are friends based on the language they use. This being said, it is essential that influencers market a product as an ad or sponsored in order for consumers to take their opinion with a grain of salt.
In this specific case, I don’t believe that the influencers should be completely held accountable for the disastrous event as they were not in charge of planning and were unaware of the circumstances. However, I do think it is necessary for said influencers to apologize to their market for false advertising. Completely ignoring this issue becomes a violation of honesty and fairness from PRSA’s Code of Ethics, as well as lessens the amount of trust between influencers and brands.
In order for specific influencers to recover from this crisis it’s crucial they confront the issue head on. To read more about the importance of influencer marketing click here.