What Sundance’s Mobile App Strategy Can Teach Show Organizers

This week’s Sundance Film Festival, the nation’s largest independent cinema festival, which will attract an estimated 50,000 people, rolled out enhanced iPhone and Android apps. I purchased the iPhone app, and want to share some thoughts that are worth noting if you have an app for your show or are planning on launching one. Though the app offers excellent utility and entertainment value which could be a post in and of itself, my focus here is on several strong marketing value drivers.

The event organizer made the decision to deploy significant extra data capacity at the event to handle the enormous demand for bandwidth as result of all the attendees with smartphones and other bandwidth hungry devices. Yes, bandwidth is an IT issue, but if your attendees are not able to enjoy the exciting features of your app because of connectivity problems, it is going to affect the “customer experience” and thus become a product/marketing issue as well. So this connectivity boost was a smart marketing decision. Of course, the extra bandwidth also benefited attendees’ other wireless activities as well—making phone calls, texting, etc.

The app includes two high-value marketing call-to-actions. The “Subscribe” feature enables users to sign up for email updates directly from the app. People that buy/use your app may not be in your database already so this not only makes it easy for users to engage with your show, it enables you to develop a deeper relationship with a person when they are immersed with your show.  What better time than this to promote your show?

The “Tell-a-Friend” feature opens the iPhone mail app with a pre-filled out message about the event app including a download link so all a user has to do is fill in their friend’s email address and hit send. Who better to promote your app than someone who is using it, and what better promotion is there than someone promoting it to their friends?

Gowalla, a geo-social networking service, which enables users to check-in at various venues throughout the event, is integrated into the app. Location-based services (LBS) such as this are a growing area that you should certainly keep your eye on. However, the point that I want to make here is less about LBS, and more about the reason Gowalla was chosen by Sundance in the first place. A show’s overall media selection strategy has a much bigger impact than any one individual media choice.

In a recent Mashable article, Joseph Beyer, director of digital initiatives for Sundance said “We started getting serious about the Geo-Social space after the 2010 Film Festival since we saw this growing part of our audience tagging spots and sharing check-ins all over Park City, Utah.”

This is a key point. It is one that I have mentioned many times in previous posts. Your audiences should drive your media choices and not the other way around—focus on following your audience and not the technology. This is exactly what Sundance did. Geo-social apps such as this are fun, engaging and new, but if your audience is not embracing them, then don’t focus on them—focus on media tools instead that are relevant to your audience even if they are not as exciting.

Posted on January 27, 2011