Categories: Top Documentaries

Fyre Festival: The Biggest Hoax of the Decade

We live in a new digitized era that has allowed many to create a huge influence through personal brands, which then manage to move the masses. Have you ever thought of the power social media influencers have over their followers?

Let’s see the possible consequences through the example of one of the biggest scams of the decade, the festival that never happened: Fyre.

A splendorous but empty promise

In April 2017, approximately 5,000 people spent millions of dollars on tickets to what they thought would be the experience of a lifetime: Fyre, a luxury music festival in an idyllic tropical setting on a private island in the Bahamas.

Never had a festival of that caliber been organized. Promotions for the Fyre Festival promised “a place where the tropical sun shines all day, and our celebrations light up the night.” They even said that the island where the festival was supposed to take place had belonged to Pablo Escobar.

Festivalgoers were promised a royal island fantasy with upscale accommodations, gourmet food, and a chance to have fun with celebrities like rapper Ja Rule and models Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid. But the reality was closer to a disaster, and it occurred in real-time on social media.

The marketing campaign

A coordinated move to promote a brand or product (if executed well with the right influencers) could reap tremendous results. Some of the world’s most powerful influencers, such as Kendall Jenner and Emily Ratajkowski, publicized the event on their social media.

The coordinated influencers’ marketing campaign had people all over the world talking about the festival, and it surely boosted the ticket sales. Fyre reached 300 million impressions in just 48 hours when the orange title push kicked off.

A single Instagram post by Kendall Jenner about Kanye West’s G.O.O.D Music Family performing at the event claimed to have amassed six million unique impressions within five days. Kendall was reportedly paid $250,000 for this post, although she didn’t disclose that it was an ad. Instead, she posted about it as if it were a personal recommendation.

Reality check-in

Thousands of attendees flocked to the Bahamas only to find disorganization as the rest of the festivalgoers rushed to claim a limited number of tents (instead of the luxurious villas they were promised), some with stripped mattresses that were soaked in water due to being left outside in the rain.

Instead of the advertised “local seafood, Bahamian-style sushi, and even roast pork,” photos showing cold cheese sandwiches in foam containers went viral.

And instead of “an immersive music festival for two transformative weekends” the many A-list musical acts promoted as stars by Fyre Festival organizers—including rappers Pusha T, Tyga, and Migos and the Blink-182 band—retired in the days leading up to the event.

Attendees began to flock out, and images and videos of distraught and disillusioned ticket holders swept social media.

The disastrous Fyre Festival spawned lawsuits against event organizers, including Ja Rule and Fyre Media CEO Billy McFarland, the latter now serving a six-year prison sentence for fraud.

Andy King, from disaster survivor to opinion leader and advisor

The proportion of this scandalous event escalated to a point where several documentaries were shot about it on Netflix and Hulu. The Netflix documentary became a truly cultural phenomenon. What no one expected was that one of the members of the festival management team would become a viral star. This was the case of Andy King, an event producer hired by McFarland and his partner, rapper Ja Rule, to make this dilapidated festival a reality.

As a producer of the festival, Andy King recounted all the struggles and problems he had to go through only to see how all the deception fell under his own weight.

Andy King took advantage of the surging popularity to become a co-founder in Inward, the event producer committed to conducting ecologically sustainable festivals. After his experience with the Fyre Festival disaster, Andy was inspired to change the whole event industry by conducting ecologically sustainable festivals. “We are eliminating paper and plastic in macro-concerts and events of this type, supporting local farmers and artisans, as well as companies managed by women and minorities. If I have this wonderful world of social media at my fingertips to bring about change, I plan to do so,” he said.

Luckily, Andy King is now available on Payphone X, so anyone can talk to him to get a valuable piece of advice on how to avoid disasters in business. Go to Payphone X to get the chance to talk to him!