In 2017 Fyre Festival became one of the most infamous events of all time. The problem was it was a non-event. The lack of a contingency across the board ensured the thousands of revellers who arrived in the Bahamas were left to count their losses and up to $100,000 of a hole in their wallets. Event organisers can learn a huge amount from the failings of Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule.
Problems:
1. Location – The original island they picked had no running water or electricity.
2. Honesty – They didn’t pay the TV production company who were looking to make a reality TV show out of the experience.
3. Investment – “The Fyre Squad” had to search for a second round of investment as they wasted funds early.
4. Sales projections – Initially 40,000 sales were muted by 31 March 2017, that soon became 20,000 and that figure wasn’t achieved either.
5. Catering – The Starr Catering Group cancelled after an agreement couldn’t be reached over their costs.
6. Headliners withdraw – Blink-182 became the first stars to quit due to a lack of confidence in the event.
7. Chaos – Fans descend on the Bahamas only to find an island without direction. There is no festival. There are no lavish villas, instead they find a tented village. They are given cheese sandwiches to eat. And they were left to wait for the help services to finally get them off the island.
Realistically, there’s a lot to take in when you look at the Fyre Festival model. But one thing for certain is events always require a back-up plan. What if something goes wrong? How will your event cope?
At TRANSLIT we recently experienced something altogether different but just as important to us and our client.
Last month we had an AIIC interpreter lined up to work on a special international event for us. We did all of our usual rehearsals and checks and everything was in place for a clean and smooth event using TRANSLIT RSI.
But disaster struck when the interpreter had technical issues on their end that their IT team were unable to fix. This is where our brilliant team took control of the situation.
Our project manager was calm and composed, she lined up another AIIC interpreter and within ten minutes they were set up to work on the event. The client did not even know about the hitch and the event ran smoothly as we had promised.
Importantly, we had planned for every eventuality. Anything can happen when it’s a live event but if you have the right team on the job you can be assured of a successful operation.
Daragh Small hails from Galway in the west of Ireland and is the PR Manager at TRANSLIT. He is a Master of Journalism and Bachelor of Arts graduate from National University of Ireland, Galway, with over ten years’ experience as a journalist, editor and communicator.
