Essence Ventures EVP of Experiential on Festival Engagement, Activations and Best Practices
Editor’s Note: In a wide-ranging marketing executive Q&A, CM sister pub Event Marketer spoke with Michael Barclay, Executive Vice President of Experiential, on 30 years of Essence Fest, including new festival features, community engagement, local marketing strategies and more. Go here for the full article.
What are some initial findings or results from the event this year?
Michael Barclay II: I think we did a great job highlighting the city of New Orleans as the centerpiece and the thing to be celebrated for our 30th anniversary of Essence Festival, because the city has been so paramount to us being able to have this event all these years. And we even started before the festival kicked off by having the city of New Orleans featured on the cover of Essence. It was a love letter to the city, and the whole issue was dedicated to it with multiple covers that were flying off the shelves. That issue is typically dedicated to one of our headliners that’s going to be on the Superdome stage. We intentionally profiled and showcased the city, and so as soon as we got into town, people were excited. I think that energy permeated through the entire weekend. It was definitely very rewarding to hear from New Orleans that we got it right.
Any different decisions you made this year or new offerings in celebration of the milestone?
MB: We brought in a couple new features that we have executed outside of Essence Festival, but never inside. One was Black Women in Hollywood Weekend, our exclusive honorary dinner in L.A. that’s full of the who’s who in Hollywood, which is followed up the next day by the Hollywood House experience. So, we brought Hollywood House to New Orleans and Essence Fest this year, an aspirational experience for those who want to be in the entertainment business, whether you want to be an actor, writer or get your project funded. They got to hear from experts and have workshops, coaching and speed mentoring.
We also rebranded the In His Zone experience with a new men’s platform that Essence Ventures is creating called Suede. It was a really luxe experience with grooming and relaxation stations, mani-pedis, facials. And in addition to the conversations happening on stage [at Suede], we had a gaming area with tournaments. That was something existing that we enhanced and also rebranded as this new platform that’s soon to be launched for Essence.
For the full Q&A, head over to Event Marketer.
