#fomo18

FOMO festival has rapidly shot to the top of many festival goers “must hit list” after a run of ultra successful shows featuring big ticket artists. This year’s festival cemented the project as a calendar event with a line-up boasting high profile international names and a nice selection of homegrown favourites. FOMO was an event founded on one simple idea; one stage, no clashes.

As a promoter and events assistant for the Oh Hello! and BBE organisations, I was excited to be given the opportunity to work with such a large-scale and highly publicised event. My role was to push ticket sales, share content and generate hype via social media, in addition to volunteering on the day to help with ticketing. This proved to be a fun yet challenging experience that provided me with an in-depth look into the music and events industry. With my sights set on becoming an events manager, specifically for music festivals, my time involved with FOMO was the greatest foot-in-the-door opportunity I could have asked for.

With the announcement that the festival would be making a return in 2018, promotions started in August 2017 (5 months prior to the Brisbane date). Video content was shared over Facebook and Instagram to raise awareness and encourage festivalgoers to sign-up for presale tickets. The real stimulating information came in early September (conveniently on my 20th birthday) - the FOMO 2018 line-up was dropped! Tickets went on sale immediately after the announcement of headliners RL Grime, Post Malone and SZA, and was so well received that Moshtix almost crashed due to such high demand. My social media posts were met with great excitement and generated more ‘likes’ and a further reach than expected. Marketing material including photos, videos and articles were posted on my accounts for the next 4 months leading up to the Brisbane leg of the festival on January 6. Because of FOMOs reputation, the line-up and the implementation of a strong promotional campaign, the Brisbane event sold out 10,000 tickets in less than 2 days.

On the day of the event, I was recruited to volunteer and assist the events operators with ticketing. My shift proved to be one of the most intensive volunteering experiences I’ve been a part of due to the mass influx of festivalgoers at certain times. With a team of 10, we successfully greeted, scanned and wristbanded over 9000 attendees in 4 hours. The chaos was definitely a character building experience that was both stressful and gratifying. In light of the trauma, the remaining hours of the festival that I was able to experience tasted that much sweeter.