Today's Ypulse Guest post is from Richard Cox, a pop culture enthusiast who works in the fashion industry. Below Richard reports back from the California desert where he braved the heat for Coachella. If you work in youth media or marketing and have an idea for a guest post, feel free to email me.

Bands Heat Up And Brands Cool Down @ Coachella

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was this past weekend, and I was one of the lucky ones who got to attend. Sure, the heat in Indio, California, was sweltering to say the least but not enough to tame the spirits of the excited teens, twenty-somethings, and, yes, older attendees (I'm guessing Paul McCartney and The Cure — headliners on Friday and Sunday night respectively — had more than a little something to do with that) who made it out. That said, it still felt like Coachella was about youth first — everyone else was secondary. The festival made this clear by tapping into some things that really resonate with the youth market — other than music of course. Some more detailed observations…

The Recession Question
My biggest question going into the weekend was how the economy was going to affect festival attendance. After all, it is the variety and number of people that make Coachella what it is. But much to my surprise, the economy didn't seem to have much of an effect on the breakdown of the crowds at all. I don’t have the exact numbers [Editor's Note: Trend Central reports that the crowds reached up to 160,000], but each day of the event felt just as packed with people as I remembered it being last year. If the economy did have an effect on attendance – it appeared to be just the number of people who purchased 3-day passes vs. only attending for 1 or 2 days. Coachella's planners also did their part to help fans circumvent the economic struggles by offering a lay-away system for purchasing tickets this year. People were allowed to put a certain amount of money down at initial booking and then pay off the remaining balance a few weeks before the actual event. I’m sure this helped more than a few people afford the $300 cost of a 3-day pass.

Eco-friendliness
I was impressed by the recycling and the compost bins scattered throughout the venue. There was also a new filtered water program where you could buy a special Coachella water bottle or bring your own Nalgene or other water bottle and get refills throughout the festival. Top that with a 10 for 1 bottle recycling program (cash in 10 empty plastic bottles and get 1 free bottle of water in return) and I’d say the festival found great ways to keep everyone hydrated with Mother Earth in mind.

Coachella iPhone app
Coachella launched an iPhone application to help organize information for those in attendance – making it easy to find showtimes, create your own custom schedule based on who you were interested in seeing, find your way around with an interactive map, and a photo uploader. Unfortunately I don’t own an iPhone (I know… I’m working on it) so I wasn’t able to download the application, but I still didn’t feel out of the loop as my friend and I were able to simply log onto the web from our phones and use the Coachella website with no problems.

Brands That Made Themselves Useful

- Playstation. The video game giant definitely made its presence felt by capitalizing on the heat and hosting an air-conditioned video game lounge for all three days. Decked out with really nice couches, the lounge was definitely a cool (literally) get-away from the intense heat as people were able to kick back and relax while playing some of the newest games on the Playstation 3 console. There was also a photo-booth. Not as much of a hit as the games but a nice touch nonetheless.

- State Farm. The insurance company was a big surprise to me during the weekend. I don't really think of youth and State Farm going together, but they had a really cool concept: State Farm hosted a tent offering people the opportunity to get free DJ lessons and burn cd’s from their own scratch sessions on turntables. They also offered internet access on about 6 computers – which was definitely a nice touch. It definitely didn't look like the State Farm tent was hosted by an insurance company…

- AT&T. Hosted a “Cool Down and Charge Up” tent. Basically an air-conditioned tent where festival-goers could recharge their handsets, buy ringtones, etc… Not an extremely innovative tent, but the phone charging service was definitely a welcome resource for those who camped at the festival all three days and would need to re-up their phones after all of the texting, tweeting, talking, etc… that we youth do on our phones these days.

All in all, I was more than pleased with this year’s festival. I got to see some of my favorite artists (M.I.A and Girl Talk) rock the stage, as well as some bands I'd never really listened to (Ghostland Observatory, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and I generally just enjoyed being around a bunch of people my age who loved music as much as I do. And Coachella's planners and the various sponsors made the fairgrounds an ideal environment to do that and much, much more.

About Richard

Richard is an Assistant Buyer for a Fashion Retail company in Southern California. He graduated from Stanford University in 2007 where he gained his love for thoughtful debate. In his spare time he enjoys sharing his ideas on music, film, fashion, and sports at his recently launched blog Media Mayhem.

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Categorized under: Music, Youth Marketing

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