NAPA Fest- 2010

NAPA FEST 2010 REPORT
Project Item: Marketing Report
By Michael Murray

SUMMARY
The Division of Culture hosted “Napa Fest” a series of Productions which took place at The National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA) which included nine live stage productions. These productions were broken into two phases. Phase one Production contained Music Festival Highlights, Genesis in Steel, Pop Meet Steel, El Cerro Del Aripo, Nache, with an allocated budget of Two hundred and fifty Thousand Dollars ($250.000.00).
Phase two which comprised Secondary School Highlights, Best Village Festival Highlights, Tobago Heritage Festival Highlight and History Through the Eyes of Calypso with an allocated budget of Three hundred and fifty Thousand Dollars ($350.000.00).
CHALLENGES
A Strategic marking plan was develop as a guideline for promotions and the advertising of the festival and each production. The plan contained the use of radio/television/print media, along with radio/television and print interviews, features and info booklets of the individual events; flyers, billboard, and E-marketing. These methods were used to generate over 35,000 patrons.
The challenges met were:
 The short time factor which was given to advertise a festival of this great magnitude.
 The festival advertising timeframe also fell between a political election period when the corporate and private sector market were on a stand still. This hampered our plan for big numbers in additional financial sponsorship.
 The confirmation of the budgets and releasing of funds in a timelier manner will help us in the future to enable us to negotiate with advertising sponsors long before the project is ready to be launched. If done, a healthy advertising campaign can be formulated and will attract substantial sponsorship packages from the corporate sector.
 Advertising the two events at the same time in the early stages with the election in full swing was a challenge. We were able after the elections to capture the interest of the local media. The print radio and television opened their doors for interviews and live broadcast on radio and television recording for later broadcast.



 The building of Napa Fest into a Tourism product was not considered by the TDC. We sent a proposal and made several follow up calls. We must keep in mind that the sounds and images of ourselves that reflect the reality of our lives and the “spirit of our ancestors” must be in the forefront of any tourism marketing plan and Napa Fest demonstrated the connection between the various cultural expressions, what we now call Multiculturalism.
RECOMMENDATIONS
 Napa Fest should be an annual event, and placed on the calendar of event in the Tourism magazine. There is a natural and inherent link between the two industries (Tourism and Culture) yet, for some reason it has not been researched, developed, and exploited.
 There is also a need to reduce the number of events without leaving out of any of the original content.
 The Napa Fest marketing team understands that the creative and cultural industries in Trinidad and Tobago holds enormous opportunities and can enhance the Tourism product, and recommends an alliance among industry players, as well as an industry association.
 Cultural services are important to job and wealth creation, if that is understood and you agree that this is the age of creativity and the knowledge economy; you must also agree we have cultural products and “brands” which we can leverage for tremendous value.
 With the opportunities of building and developing indigenous “brands” we recommend The Ministry of the Arts and Multiculturalism set up a Festivals and Events Bureau in the near future. As successful as some Trinidadian artistes have been in the past the fact is we must keep putting our Festivals and Artistes on the world map. Therefore, the mandate of this “NEW” Festivals and events Bureau should be:
o The Festival and Events Bureau must put a permanent infrastructure in place to ensure the bar is raised at the local festival level by lending support in areas of finance, marketing, and production.
o To promote, market, advertise, and distribute Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural products and the visual arts in the wider Caribbean and beyond on a year-round basis.
o Liaise with local stakeholders and overseas agencies in the planning of exporting our festivals and performing arts in general.
o Working with the Cultural and Tourism stakeholders in advancing our overseas workshop program for Steel Pan, Dance, Calypso and all the other Trinidad and Tobago developing cultural products.

SUMMARY OF MEDIA
Express, Newsday, and Guardian
 The NAPA festival received immense response from the print media. As stated in The Daily Express section 2 Friday 23rd April 2010 NAPA FEST HAS SUCCESSFUL OPENING by reporter Mr. Wayne Bowman “The audience at Sunday’s run of the NAPA fest experienced a first class production with very few hiccups on stage. In fact, the featured act, Champion Choirs from last year’s National Music Festival, all delivered excellent performances that were enhanced by great sound and lighting.”
 The placing of updated information in the Events Section of all print of Secondary School highlights, Genesis in Steel, Pop Meets Steel, El Cerro Del Aripo, Best Village Festival Highlights, Tobago Heritage Festival Highlight and History Through the Eyes of Calypso and feature articles on each programme, was another main factor that maintained the momentum of the marketing.
 The Guardian on Friday, May 21 headlines read; Soothing Music Elevates spirits at NAPA FEST, it was the Guardian feature on a upcoming event NACHE which brought the multiculturalism aspect of the Festival into focus, that headline read; NAPA HOSTS East Indian dance Festival. After the review in the Guardian of El Cerro del Aripo on June 24th which read; El Cerro Del Aripo awakes T&T Cultural beauty was really the turning point of greater attendance for the remainder of the festival.
 Picture highlights of NAPA Festival also graced the front pages of the Guardian and Express four times, and with other articles that spread across the three media houses with the following headlines; El Cerro Del Aripo a success at Napa, Pan by Storm at Napa, Pan Rises as Pop Meets Steel, Sweet Pan Thrills at NAPA, Grand tribute to calypso icons of yesteryear, Calypso’s future in good hands, and the most touching of all “Why the caged bird sings and big man cry” was in keeping with the high quality of the NAPA productions.
 In addition, each production enjoyed paid for Art work 17 x 7 spots in the Guardian, Newsday and Express.
Radio Stations
 The Radio advertising campaign was stretched across 10 radio stations, advertising spots were allocated with variances with considerations of the various genres e.g., Sangeet Radio and 103 FM was the center of the NACHE advertising.
 Wack Radio, Sweet 100, 94.7FM, I.95FM and the Vibe105 related to the indigenous brands Best Village, Tobago Heritage, Pan and Calypso which brought cultural appreciation to all supporting groups.
 With Radio jingles on all 10 stations per day and over 21 interviews and bonus adlibs justified our advertising spend of $215,000.
 Radio Stations used were, Sweet 100, 91.1 Talk City, 103 FM, Wack Radio, Ebony Radio, 94.7 FM, Sangeet Radio, Vibe 105 FM, i95.5, and 99.1 FM and Isaac Radio.
Television
 Television remains the most effective medium to excite and create interest and awareness in the entertainment market. Due to the fact that concentrated marketing and advertising considerations were in place to include variances in the frequency of advertising spots to create and maximize impact for each event, we were able to reach a wider market and at the same time spread the spend over various stations.
 We brought on Channel 5 in Tobago for the Tobago Heritage Festival, IETV for NACHE Dance Festival and the Streaming of the Celebrating our Calypso Monarchs on Wack TV gave the Napa Festival visibility worldwide.
 Our 12 TV interviews and recordings of some event which were rebroadcasted at later dates made Napa Festival a household name in Trinidad and Tobago.
 We believe however, that Government run TV& RADIO stations must play a greater role in recording, “LIVE” broadcast , and rebroadcast of festivals of the magnitude of Napa Festival.
Napa Fest was an unforgettable experience where team work was prevalent and support was received from our Director and team leader to bring these events to a successful close. Special thanks to the producers of the individual shows who really displayed vision, creativity and foresight and because of their immaculate timing for producing data to the marketing team, was also a vital component in the advertising schedule being kept despite the tight schedule of events, which sometimes ran concurrently.