DEJ #8

Posted on

The CNBC article “Fyre Festival: How a 25-year-old scammed investors out of $26 Million” reminded me that I watched a documentary about Fyre Festival in high school. I watched the Netflix documentary Fyre in a marketing class. It was so interesting to see how powerful marketing can be. While Billy McFarland failed in so many ways one successful thing he did was market the event. With virtually nothing to show in an advertisement, he thought outside the box and created a viral marketing campaign that set the expectations of the event very high. Using the supermodels Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, and Allesandra Ambrosio brought a sense of legitimacy to the festival that unknown models would have never accomplished. He also used social media to help the event go viral. While it was all fake and a disastrous situation was brewing, McFarland’s tactics were smart. He understood the target market and how to convince them to trust him. He masterly frauded people, betrayed their trust, and acted extremely unethically. He defrauded thousands of people and knowingly spread mass misinformation. McFarland also ran the marketing campaign without the capital to support it. The false advertising of the festival also went on too long. It was not enough for McFarland to create a fake story but he also continued the lie until it put people’s lives at risk. McFarland had the power to shut down the festival before it began and own up to all of the false advertising, but he failed to do so.