The recipe for a successful event: what you can learn from The Flying Dutch

[jrineakter]

It's Saturday night and you've just got home from a fantastic festival. You've had a great day with your friends. Before you go to sleep, you scroll through your Facebook timeline. There you see the event again. Now that you're on the social media tour, you also open Instagram and Snapchat. You see images, videos and a look behind the scenes of your idols. This is a great example of how one event is promoted via different social media channels. So what is the secret recipe for a successful event? With these ingredients you can make social media work for you.


Festivals are extremely popular and if you are an EDM (Electronic Dance Music and related music) lover, you probably didn't miss it. I'm talking about The Flying Dutch. The best DJs of the Netherlands performed in three different cities: Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Eindhoven. The Dutch feeling was present. Amsterdam represented team red, Eindhoven team white, Rotterdam team blue. You can probably see it: red-white-blue DJs were transported to the different locations by helicopter.


It seems so simple: put the best DJs of the Netherlands (or actually the world) on your line-up, and the tickets will be sold out in no time. Of course, it helps enormously with ticket sales if Tiësto, Armin van Buren and Martin Garrix are present, but you still have to organize such a festival well to meet the expectations of armenia telegram number list your visitors. ING is the main sponsor and partner of The Flying Dutch. Tjitske Benedictus (Head Sponsoring, Events & Activation at ING) and Jeroen Kreeft (together with John Ewbank co-owner and creator of The Flying Dutch) shared their story about the festival with me.

It seems so easy; put the best DJs from the Netherlands (or actually the world) on your line-up, and the tickets will be sold out in no time.

How did the idea come about?
Jeroen Kreeft: "The idea actually came out of nowhere. When I was having coffee with John Ewbank, he had a friend visiting. He said: I want to throw a house party. We called him 'Crazy Eppie', he with his weird ideas. But still, that's how the idea came about. When you throw a party, you have to do it big."

We called him Malle Eppie, he with his strange ideas.

The Flying Dutch and ING, where is the match?
Tjitske: "You see that the current generation of young people, millennials , is a difficult generation to connect to as a brand. They spend a lot of time on social media, watch less television and are difficult to attract. Our research shows that this group consists of many dance enthusiasts." It is therefore not surprising that ING is a sponsor of The Flying Dutch. With no less than 120,000 visitors, the bank can show its name among this large group of millennials .

Popularity of dance music
ING mapped out how the Dutch feel about Electronic Dance Music (EDM), visiting events, Dutch DJs and the festival The Flying Dutch. The research was conducted among more than 1,000 Dutch people aged 16 and over. Almost half (47 percent) appear to be fans of EDM. If you look at the group under 30, then no less than 70 percent are fans of EDM. Of all these fans, 48 ​​percent visited one dance event in the past year. That amounts to 23 percent of all Dutch people.

The Netherlands has popular DJs, almost half of the world's DJs are Dutch. That makes you feel proud! No less than 80 percent of EDM lovers indicate that they are proud of these popular Dutch people. If you add to that the fact that 70 percent of the respondents see EDM as a part of Dutch culture, it is not surprising that an event like The Flying Dutch is enormously popular.

Amsterdam. 2nd Edition of Flying Dutch
Amsterdam. 2nd Edition of Flying Dutch. Photo via ANP

A well-considered approach
In order to, as mentioned, guide the festival in the right direction, the organizational side plays an important role. As a festival, but you can of course also think broader. Think for example of organizing your own congress, publishing a book or giving a lecture. How do you ensure that your target group becomes enthusiastic and shares your event via social media? Think of an overall broad approach and get inspiration from the approach of The Flying Dutch.