The infamous Fyre Festival

I finally got around to watching the Fyre Fest documentaries everyone is raving about. WOW. What a train wreck! Let’s look at it from a PR perspective (obvi). In the hulu documentary, Fyre Fraud, Billy McFarland said, “So many things had to go right, to make it this big of a failure.” That is powerful coming from the man who created this whole disaster. But, I completely agree with his statement. They promoted this event so well. They used their PR skills to connect with influencers and they used social media as a tool so effectively. They were able to do exactly what they wanted (as far as advertising for the event) and they reached millions of people while doing it. As a student studying PR, I find this fascinating. Putting all of the failures aside, they were able to promote this event in a way that got the reach they wanted and the outcome they desired. People were paying tens of thousands of dollars for tickets to this event, so they must have done something right.

Now, bringing all of the failures back into the picture, they did NOT have a game plan. How do you throw a party without a plan?! Alright, I guess they did have a “plan” but they did not pay much attention to the “calendar” portion of the Matrix.. Am I right Case Studies Students? The idea was great, but they needed at least another year to make sure everything was planned before even promoting the event.

I was so intrigued by this whole situation that even after watching both the Netflix and Hulu documentaries I still wanted to know more. As I was reading some articles on the Fyre Festival, I came across one that covers the PR aspect of the whole event.

This article shared some great tips that, if followed, could have saved the Fyre Festival from turning into a disaster. The tip I think is most important is “Tell the truth”. If McFarland would have just told everyone the truth about what was going on and cancelled the event, it would have been a lot less drama. Because he lied about basically everything, people showed up to the Bahamas thinking they were going to have a luxury vacation and ended up sleeping on the ground and eating food that looked like an elementary school kid made it.

Moral of the story…. When throwing an event:

PLAN - Make a plan and it wouldn't hurt to also make a backup plan! Don’t promote an event you have nothing planned for it.

BE HONEST - Tell the truth, even if it’s not the best news, people would rather hear bad news than be lied to.

If you haven't already, you need to go watch these documentaries.. They are so interesting!

If you want to go to a great event, that won't go terribly wrong, come to a UVU PRSSA event!

http://www.uvuprssa.org/

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