Bellwether Music Festival: ‘If you want to see it all, you can’
It seems like a handful of new music festivals pop up each summer. You might think that trend has reached a tipping point, but music promoter Bill Donabedian disagrees. The founder of Cincinnati festivals Bunbury and Midpoint is putting that belief behind the new Bellwether Music Festival at Renaissance Park in Waynesville on Friday and Saturday, Aug. 10 and 11. The music and camping event features top name acts such as MGMT, the Flaming Lips, Echo & the Bunnymen and Local Natives.
“Some people think the festival bubble has burst,” Donabedian said. “That may be true for the mega-festival, but you can do more boutique events, you just have to find a way to differentiate yourself from the others and create a great experience. What’s really driving the popularity of festivals, is the fact millennials don’t buy stuff. They want experiences.
“Companies are realizing brand activation and experiential marketing are so much more important to connect with this audience,” he continued. “The very best brand activation or experiential marketing you can do is live events. We aren’t coming to the tail end of festivals, we’re at the beginning.”
Donabedian believes the future is niche.
“You’ll see more niche events because the events are the advertising or online connection,” he said. “Those two things together will really feed one another. That’s because the events provide great content for social media and social is a way to reach people and let them come together in a live setting. It’s a perfect ecosystem.”
Bellwether only has two stages with staggered performers so festivalgoers won’t have to choose between two bands playing at the same time. For Donabedian, this is different from the multistage Bunbury Festival and the multi-venue Midpoint Music Festival.
“Everything else I’ve done, the user has to choose what bands they see,” he said. “Sometimes you see all the bands and the price and you think, ‘This is awesome.’ But how many of those bands do you really get to see? It’s like when you get cable and everything is bundled and you think, ‘I don’t even watch most of these channels. Why am I paying so much?’ Our idea is to curate this in a manner where if you want to see it all, you can.
“Unlike a lot of festivals, the stages face one another and they’re about 1,000 feet apart,” Donabedian added. “When one band finishes, there’s 15 minutes until the next band. You get to see all the bands and you won’t feel rushed or like you’re running around.”