THE FYRE FESTIVAL

Student Name

Institutional Affiliation

Executive Summary

This report contains a through analysis of Fyre Media, which aspires in the future to organize successful music festivals, after its failed and highly publicized attempt in 2017. To accomplish this, and ensure that the mistakes that were experienced in 2017 are not repeated in the future, Fyre Media has to follow the action plan that has been provided by the consultant stipulating the following:

Creation of a proper leadership structure, which will contribute to the development of an effective organizational structure and culture.

Development of a proper financial plan before the organization of the next music festival. This will entail, ensuring that they have a budget of the total expenses that they need to make the project a success. In addition to that, they will need to be aware of how to charge for tickets, and how to attract investors and sponsors to these music festivals to ensure that they have the required amount of money to make the project a success.

The utilization of proper marketing strategies that are within the company’s budget, but highly effective. It is important for Fyre Media to know that the goal is to ensure that, the right information reaches the right target audience.

Fyre Media is in a position where they have the potential to succeed, and become a key player in terms of organizing future music festivals in the United States, and possibly other parts of the world. For Fyre Media to be successful in the future, they must address the problems that were identified in the analysis section using the action plan recommendations.

Introduction

In 2017, Billy McFarland through his company, Fyre Media, organized one of the most documented music festivals for the wrong reasons. In addition to that, the festival got a high social media response, with a majority of people creating memes, and parodies all meant to poke fun at the poor organization and ultimate failure of this music festival. In this report, there will be an analysis of the reasons as to why the music festival failed, and a proposal of how a change in the organizational structure will address these issues. For instance, in the report, there will be information on how the current team ought to change their operations and organizational behavior to ensure that they are in a better position to plan for an effective festival in the future. In addition to that, there will be solutions to the financial limitations that are likely to arise in the organization of future festivals, and the application of the right, and effective marketing strategies that will ensure that there is an aspect of authenticity for all the stakeholders and customers.

CORE ANALYSIS

In this section, the paper will determine the root causes of the identified problem and use organizational behavior theories and tools to identify and explain the challenges. The paper will then draw implications about how the issues will be addressed.

Organizational Structure and Culture Issues

An effective organizational structure of a company is whereby there is reliable communication, clear distribution of tasks, and responsibilities, and adequate flexibility of the company whenever there is the need for change. In companies where they have an effective organizational structure, all the employees understand the concept of authority and accountability, and the behavior that is acceptable within that organization. An important point to note is that, an effective organizational structure is realized, if the employees have the authority to make decisions based on their tasks without the need of waiting for the management to instruct them on what to do, and they can be held accountable for their actions and decisions.

Fyre Festival lack of an adequate organizational structure and culture facilitated a majority of the problems that they encountered, and which ultimately contributed to the failure of the music festival. Other than the CEO of the firm, Billy McFarland, none of the other major players in the planning of the event were employees of the firm. The company had outsourced most of its planning activities such as financial planning, marketing, and talent producer to individuals who were not directly employed by the company. The lack of an organizational structure meant that there was no clear chain of command, and a majority of the employees working in the project did not know who to report to, when they faced the problems in the planning process. In addition to that, the lack of a proper organizational structure led to the development of communication issues during the planning of this festival. For instance, the finance sector of the company failed to inform the employees that they were facing a strain in their finances. If there was proper structure in the firm, there would have been an account who would have created an adequate budget that would have been used to control how the finances were utilized in this project. In addition to that, there would have been a project manager who would have assessed the situation, known whether the company would have been capable of organizing the festival within the given timeline, and the resources that were needed to make it successful.

The company lacked the proper organizational culture. This stems from the beliefs, behavior and what the company’s leadership intends to implement for the employees to follow. The assessment of this case study insinuates that McFarland’s main interest was making money of this festival. His character is lacking based on the way he conducted his business, engaged with his employees, and customers. He fired employees who tried to advice him on the best approach to make this festival work such as postponing its date. He withheld information from some of the organizers such as when planning for accommodation purposes. In addition to that, he abandoned his employees during the music festival when he realized that his company would not be in a position to make this event successful. Furthermore, he failed to pay a majority of the employees who had dedicated their time and effort, working on this project expecting payment after the festival. Failure by the leadership of the firm to define the proper way in which the employees should behave, and the values that they should uphold is an indication of lack of organization culture.

Financial Challenges

Fyre Festival faced a variety of financial challenges that were mainly founded on the poor leadership and lack of expertise in organizing festivals. For instance, a majority of the tickets that were sold were the $500, which could not meet the costs, or fund the planning process of this event. Second, the company used its finances poorly. For instance, the company had used $2million on alcohol, while failing to pay their main acts in the festival, which ultimately contributed to Blink-182 announcing they would not perform in the festival. Fyre Festival failed to secure a reliable sponsor who would have assisted them to meet their costs, and possibly made the event successful. Although Comcast was initially willing to provide a $25 million deal to Fyre Festival, they withdrew their offer after conducting due diligence on the festival.

Marketing Strategies

One of the company’s marketing strategies, led it to lose the initial location for the event. Fyre Festival violated the stipulations that they had been provided for hosting the festival at Norman’s Cay. Even after the deal was canceled, Fyre Festival continued to promote the festival as taking place in Norman Cay, although it had been moved to Roker Point on Great Exuma. In addition to that, it paid a lot of money to its 250 social media influencers to post an orange square on their social media pages (Chan & Yazdanifard, 2014). For instance, Kendall Jenner was paid $250,000 for the post, which she did not classify as an advertisement. In addition to that, this strategy failed to attract the interest of a majority of premium customers as most of the tickets that were sold were the $500 tickets, which were the cheapest, and failed to ensure that the company had enough funds to meet the costs of the festival.

ACTION PLAN

Professional Leadership

There is the need to utilize effective leadership at Fyre Media. Although Billy McFarland is the ‘brains’ behind the establishment of the company, it is clear that he lacks effective leadership qualities to ensure that Fyre Media realizes its goals and objectives (Madanchian et al., 2017). Initially, the employees of the company believed in his vision and ability to attract the right investors, however, internal human resources issues arose in the company and McFarland dealt with them in a poor manner. For instance, he dismissed employees who were highlighting the challenges of the project (Lebeck & Chighizola, 2018). He failed to adhere to the advise that was provided by experts in different sectors, and did not pay his employees after the festival had flopped.

Professional leadership will ensure that the organization is in a better position to develop an effective organizational structure and culture as stipulated in the decision criteria. Organizations that have professional leaders are able to develop the right hierarchies, ensure that all the employees know their roles in the company, and develop the right values that will ensure that the employees have the right level of motivation to perform at an optimal level (Madanchian et al., 2017). For instance, the organization will be able to have an effective human resource management department, which will hire the right employees who possess the skills that the organization needs (Lebeck & Chighizola, 2018). In addition to that, the employees based on their skills, personalities and the attitudes that they have will be the best fit in the organization. It will facilitate an aspect of teamwork, which will ultimately contribute to the overall organization success.

Financial Plan

This was a significant problem for the first festival, which contributed to its flop. In the second festival, Fyre Media needs to have a list of potential investors and a plan to ensure that they will come on board. Fyre Festival will need to hire financial consultants and event organizers who will assist in the development of a budget detailing its expected costs. After establishing its expected costs, the company can then determine the ticket prices for its festival, dividing them in terms of prices. For instance, there is no need to have a lot of $500 tickets if the overall ticket sales will not meet the costs of the organization of the event, ensure that the sponsors are able to recoup their finances, and Fyre Media is able to generate a considerable amount of profit.

Developing a detailed financial plan will ensure that they are able to provide reasonable presentations to their list of sponsors. They will meet with them, and inform them on how they will use the expected funds, and their plan to repay them. In addition to that, they will inform them of the expected ticket sales, which will ensure that the sponsors are able to assess how the festival will benefit them from an advertising perspective. This means that, the sponsors will be able to see how they will benefit from participating in the festival. In the first festival, the potential sponsor Comcast Ventures considered the deal with Fyre Media but they may have felt that even with the $25 million funds, Fyre Media would not have been able to make the festival successful because they lacked a comprehensive financial plan to detail how they were going to use the funds that were made available to them.

Effective Marketing Strategies

Fyre Media had an effective promotional strategy initially. However, it implemented it in a manner that ultimately made it a flop. For instance, initially they unveiled the festival during the Web Summit in 2016 in Lisbon, Portugal, which is a large tech event. Secondly, they used influential social media influencers who led to the festival receiving 300 million impressions within the first 48 hours. However, based on its overall ticket sales, this marketing strategy can be considered to be a flop. For instance, it failed to attract a reliable number of ticket holders in its $12,000, and $250,000 tickets. This is despite using $250,000 to pay individual social media influencers such as Kendall Jenner. It means that the organization failed to attract its main target audience.

In future, to market its product, it can use a similar marketing strategy as the one used by Red Bull. The company should not focus on selling the event, but building its brand to a certain target audience (Chan & Yazdanifard, 2014). In this case, it should cover tech events on its social media platforms, sponsor technocrats and even gamers, and include the videos of such events in its social media pages. Fyre Media should then focus mainly on its target audience such as young, urban technological enthusiasts and market its brand to them through the tech events and technocrats. This may contribute to the organization having successful festivals in the future.

Plan for the Future

Improving its Hiring Process

As an organization, Fyre Media will need to employ personnel who fit in terms of the skills that they need. This means that the employees in various positions in the company will have the right skills, and expertise to fulfil their duties without the need for hiring external employees, especially in the key positions of organization. By improving the hiring process, the company will avoid a majority of the problems that it encountered in the organization of the first music festival and be in a better position to organize a successful event.

Implementation of Regular Meetings

An important observation in the first music festival was that, the independent teams that were working on different aspects never consulted each other, or communicated with each other to show the development of their progress. In fact, it seems that it was only McFarland who was aware of the problems and progress of the event. In future, there is the need to have regular meetings among the team members (probably weekly or bi-weekly) to assess the progress of the project. This will ensure that there is effective communication among all the team members and a majority of the problems can be solved before making considerable progress for the project.

Conclusion

Fyre Media’s festival was a failure because of poor leadership that negatively affected its organizational structure and culture, and employee motivation. It also lacked an effective financial plan, and marketing strategy. In the analysis section, it was determined that an improvement in the organizational structure and culture would have a positive impact on the overall success of future events of the organization. In addition to that, the company needs to professionalize its leadership as this will contribute to them hiring the right, and best fit personnel to the company. Having the right employees and structure will contribute to better financial plans and effective marketing strategies, which will positively contribute to the overall success of its future events.

References

Acar, A., & Acar, P. (2014). Organizational culture types and their effects on organizational performance in Turkish hospitals. EMAJ: Emerging Markets Journal, 3(3), 18-31. https://doi.org/10.5195/emaj.2014.47Ahmady, G. A., Mehrpour, M., & Nikooravesh, A. (2016). Organizational structure. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 230, 455-462. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.09.057Burton, R. M., & Obel, B. (2018). The science of organizational design: Fit between structure and coordination. Journal of Organization Design, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-018-0029-2Chan, J. M., & Yazdanifard, R. (2014). How social media marketing can influence the profitability of an online company from a consumer point of view. Journal of Research in Marketing, 2(2), 157. https://doi.org/10.17722/jorm.v2i2.55Gochhayat, J., Giri, V. N., & Suar, D. (2017). Influence of Organizational Culture on Organizational Effectiveness: The Mediating Role of Organizational Communication. Sage Journals.

Kanten, P., Kanten, S., & Gurlek, M. (2015). The effects of organizational structures and learning organization on job Embeddedness and individual adaptive performance. Procedia Economics and Finance, 23, 1358-1366. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2212-5671(15)00523-7Lebeck, B., & Chighizola, N. (2018). Emotional intelligence and its effect on performance outcomes in a leadership development school. Journal of Values-Based Leadership, 11(2). https://doi.org/10.22543/0733.62.1223Madanchian, M., Hussein, N., Noordin, F., & Taherdoost, H. (2017). Leadership effectiveness measurement and its effect on organization outcomes. Procedia Engineering, 181, 1043-1048. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2017.02.505Shahzad, F. (2014). Impact of organizational culture on employees’ job performance. International Journal of Commerce and Management, 24(3), 219-227. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijcoma-07-2012-0046Tsai, Y. (2011). Relationship between organizational culture, leadership behavior and job satisfaction. BMC Health Services Research, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-11-98Exhibit A: Decision Criteria

Action Criteria 1 Criteria 2 Criteria 3

Development of the right organizational structure X Effective Hiring process X Correct Financial Plans X

Effective Marketing Strategies X

Key

1= Highest

3= Lowest

If Fyre Media develops the right organizational structure, it will be able to have an effective hiring process, which will ensure that they have the right employee personnel to ensure that the company is able to develop effective financial plans and marketing strategies.

Exhibit B: Breakdown of the Company’s Problems

4676140191770Loss of Key Performers

Loss of Key Performers

847090239395Poor Financial Planning

Poor Financial Planning

2618740163195Lack of Proper Accomodation

Lack of Proper Accomodation

-734060191770Loss of Key Venue

Loss of Key Venue

42665652273302371090227330551815303530

3442970290830

535241583185160909016510-276860197485

4990465163195Contributed to the failure of the festival

Contributed to the failure of the festival

3085465325120The revellers were left stranded on an island where there was an incoming storm and lack of proper accommodation

The revellers were left stranded on an island where there was an incoming storm and lack of proper accommodation

1104265174625Lack of Proper Funds to finance the project

Lack of Proper Funds to finance the project

-838835212725An alternative venue that was not ideal

An alternative venue that was not ideal

Exhibition C: Organization Structure

Exhibition D: Organizational Culture: