Pull a new engine of consumption: travel with the show

Recently, the 2024 Beijing Super Strawberry Music Festival opened at the Flying Camp in Beijing Shiyuan Park, and the audience watched the performance on the spot. Xinhua

Liu Mengmeng, reporter of China Development and Reform News Guo Dingyuan

Entering the flowery May, cultural and tourism activities across the country are blowing out as a whole. According to the data center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, during this year's "May Day" holiday, the total number of domestic tourism trips nationwide was 295 million, a year-on-year increase of 7.6%, and an increase of 28.2% compared with the same period in 2019 on a comparable basis; The total travel expenditure of domestic tourists was 166.89 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.7%, and an increase of 13.5% on a comparable basis compared with the same period in 2019.

In addition to popular tourist cities such as Beijing, Xi'an, and Nanjing, and new Internet celebrity cities such as Zibo, Harbin, and Tianshui, cultural performing arts have become a new business card for tourism, and "traveling with performances" has become a new trend for young people to travel.

In 2023, in order to improve the quality of the supply of cultural and tourism products during the festival, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism will release a national list of tourism and performing arts products, and launch a number of tourism and performing arts projects with rich cultural connotation, exquisite artistic level, and acclaimed and popular. It is proposed to guide the healthy and orderly development of music festivals and concerts to meet the new needs of "traveling with performances".

According to the data monitoring of the ticketing information collection platform of the China Performance Industry Association, during this year's "May Day" holiday, there were 34,400 commercial performances (excluding performances in entertainment venues) across the country, a year-on-year increase of 10.66%.

Going to a city for a concert has become the traffic password of many cities. While the concert drove the city's consumption potential to continue to explode, major brands also entered the game one after another to innovate scene marketing.

A new perspective of urban cultural tourism

Culture is the soul of a city, and it can be accumulated into a more lasting force. As the ancient capitals of the mainland, cities such as Xi'an, Luoyang, and Nanjing can transform their own historical and cultural resources into city brand characteristics. Innovation is the driving force of urban development and an important path to promote the prosperity of urban culture. Nowadays, many cities are opening up new perspectives and relying on special cultural and tourism activities such as concerts, music festivals, dramas and musicals to enhance their influence.

In 2023, Shijiazhuang proposed to hold the "Rock Home Town" - China's "Rock City" music performance season, and announced that it would build China's "Rock City" in an all-round way. Shijiazhuang is not bluntly labeled as "rock", but has long been indissoluble with "rock". In the 80s of the last century, "Popular Songs", known as "the first magazine of Chinese rock", was founded in Shijiazhuang and became a rock enlightenment book that influenced a generation of young people. More than 20 years later, "Kill the Shijiazhuang People" created by the rock band "Universal Youth Hotel" hit the inner world of Shijiazhuang people with its vivid and vivid lyrics, and was nicknamed the "city song" of Shijiazhuang.

This year, Shijiazhuang insisted on cultivating local brands and introducing well-known brands, held a series of large-scale performance activities, maintained the popularity of performances, further improved the quality of performances, and continuously expanded the brand influence of "Rock City". Vigorously build the "Rock Home Town" music city IP, and comprehensively promote the construction of Shijiazhuang "Rock City".

During the "May Day" period, Yantai and Hua Chenyu's "Born to the Sun, Bravely Chasing Dreams" concert went both ways, and the concert continued the singer's original outdoor park mode, starting at 3 o'clock in the morning, choosing the form of "singing until sunrise" to interact with Yantai's local characteristics, bringing topics and discussions to Yantai. According to the "2024 May Day Holiday Travel Trend Report" released by Tongcheng Travel, Yantai topped the list of "May Day" holiday destinations for the first time, becoming this year's tourism dark horse. After seeing the two-way success of the concert between Yantai and Hua Chenyu, many netizens said to the cancellation of the Phoenix Legend Jinan concert, "Jinan, it's useless to give you a chance, and you can't catch the wealth and wealth."

New marketing for brand scenarios

Informatization is profoundly changing the way of life of society, giving birth to a more trendy and avant-garde consumption concept, the traditional marketing thinking model needs to be changed urgently in the "performance economy" model, and the attention of target users has become an opportunity and challenge for brands.

Mao Geping Beauty, a national fashion brand, has cooperated with the domestic music festival brand "Strawberry Music Festival" to establish a new form of cross-border marketing of "beauty + music" to enhance brand attention. With the theme of "Joy and Youth", the full line of beauty products will be displayed, and popular products such as powder, eye shadow, highlighter, and lipstick can be tried for free at the event site, allowing the brand to penetrate into different cultural circles of young people.

This year's original music festival brand "Bubble Island Music and Art Festival" was held in Dongjiang Qinhai Music Square, Binhai New Area, Tianjin, attracting nearly 100,000 spectators. Through cooperation with the brand IP of "Xianghai Lohas Festival", it brings together various forms such as flash cars, containers, and dining cars. KFC set up a pop-up car and launched a check-in comic map of "Fun May Day and KFC Adventure"; Skechers set up a giant bubble shoe device on site to carry out special activities such as DIY interaction of shoe flowers and Saipan machine wine lottery; Honor of Kings opened Xiao Cai Rocking Car Park for the first time and distributed set gifts.

The way that brands obtain music festival cooperation through investment bidding, even if they get exclusive booths and experience areas, will be discounted in the participation of many brands. Therefore, many brands have transitioned from sponsorship and naming to creating their own music festival IP. The new tea drink brand Mixue Bingcheng held the "Ice Cream Music Festival", and the beverage brand Yuanqi Forest held the "Yuanqi Forest Music Festival", so as to create a personalized brand, drive the brand popularity with the popularity of the music festival, and enhance the brand image and recognition.

Zhang Qian, an associate professor at the School of Music and Recording Arts at Communication University of China, said that music festivals are a good way to brand a city. In addition, the youth group of music festivals has more consumption potential, and in the long run, the role of stimulating consumption cannot be ignored.

There are concerns in the performance market

While bringing new ideas to urban development and brand marketing, the popularity of the performance market has also brought many problems.

The quality of the concert was uneven, and the selection of seats, ticket prices, and sound effects caused the audience to question them. At Liang Jingru's concert in Nanjing, many audiences encountered "pillar tickets", and their vision was blocked by load-bearing pillars almost throughout the concert. There are still a lot of vacancies at the concert site where "scalpers" grab tickets, and Zhao Lei said at the 2024 tour Jinan station that "people are sparsely seated, but there are really no tickets, I don't know what's going on."

In this regard, industry insiders analyzed that there are many performances and heavy tasks, and singers will inevitably be in poor condition; The organizer blindly pursues economic interests or scenes, unreasonable seating arrangements, and ignores the feelings of the audience; The imbalance between supply and demand breeds the phenomenon of "scalpers".

Most of the reasons for the problems of these concerts are not due to the city managers, but the performance of the concerts is inevitably linked to the image of the city, which affects the audience's willingness to travel in the local area and the reputation of the city after the performance.

In addition, the cost of brand operation of music festivals is too high, and the risk of public opinion is high, and it is difficult to have a spillover effect. The "Tang Daren Yuanqi Music Festival" hosted by Tang Daren and the "Youth Music Festival" organized by the membrane family are separated from the brand image, which only achieves short-term publicity effects and is difficult to bring long-term benefits.

If you want to get a share of the explosive performance market, you must grasp the essence of the performance that is in line with the brand's characteristics. For example, Heineken has vigorously laid out the electronic music track, founded its own music label "Heineken Star Electronic Music", held the "Heineken Electronic Music Carnival", and named the electronic music variety show "Star Electronic Music Alliance", deeply binding the brand with "electronic music" and building a unique marketing model.

Performance consumption is habitual consumption and has a continuous nature. Whether the concert market in various regions can maintain a lasting upward trend will require further testing by time and the market. For the city's cultural tourism, it is necessary to strengthen the construction of local performing arts infrastructure, create local characteristic performing arts culture, and create a good popular cultural atmosphere. At the same time, the brand cross-border cooperation music festival should balance revenue and expenditure, achieve the integration of quality and efficiency, carry out differentiated positioning, and promote the long-term growth of the brand in the future.