Our digital specialist, Holly Archer Boswell, stepped away from the screens and headed to Fieldays to see the impact a brand can create with a positive real world experience
Over the last few days I have been reflecting on my journey down SH1 to Fieldays. Having worked on clients before where Fieldays is a tentpole event on the marketing calendar I thought I knew what to expect. But this was my first time attending and what I saw when I ventured out from the carpark blew my mind.
Impressive logistics
I wasn’t there to buy anything necessarily, but if I was it would have been a real kid in a candy store situation.
My first thought was what a logistical challenge it must have been to get all the vendors set up and ready to go for day 1. There would have been a few late nights for some unlucky project manager.
I also didn’t envisage so many vendors covering everything that someone living in an RD postcode could ever want. Everything from power tools to power companies. Political parties to actual parties. There were a couple of stylish art pieces that even caught my eye.
A festival vibe
There was a real festival vibe. Everyone appeared to be in a super positive mood. There was music, food, bars. It just also happened you could get a cracking deal on a tractor trailer if it took your fancy. As wide as the range of vendors were, there was no doubt this was an event for the farming community. They were all there and they looked ready to spend. There is no doubt this is a significant revenue driver for many brands.
I spoke to someone who said Fieldays sales represent 50% of their annual turnover. I didn’t hear a lot of chat around the cost of living crisis. It did make me wonder which industries are out there thriving, growing and investing, when the broader narrative is around people scrutinising budgets and making savings wherever they can.
Customers engaging with brands with a positive mindset
I hadn’t been on site for more than an hour before I got lured in to watching Stephen Donald man up in the ‘ute pull’ competition. This wasn’t the highlight by any stretch. It was the fence building competition I could have watched all day. For someone whose idea of an agricutural experience is a brisk walk around Cornwall Park, watching these guys settle into their work was something to behold.
Circling back to the reason for me being in amongst a crowd of Red Bands and mullets, I thought a lot about the impact this event has on the brands that invest so heavily to be there. We spend so much of our day engrossed in digital platforms, building audience segments and optimising CPMs, we forget the meaningful impact a brand can have on someones life with a positive real world experience. As much as it is about generating a short, sharp sales spike, the Fieldays experience sets the benchmark for customer service.
It is one of the few occasions where customers engage with brands with a positive mindset from the get go. Often the quality of a brands customer experience is defined by how they manage and resolve conflict. This was not that. I felt the brand’s doing it right at Fieldays were the ones delivering an authentic and meaningful brand experience while also capitalising on a highly lucrative sales window.
