Nova Entertainment has upped the ante for its Red Room experiential platform, partnering with Qantas, Hamilton Island and Frontier Touring for an intimate gig with Taylor Swift.
In what it's calling its “biggest Red Room ever”, Nova is taking close to 50 fans to Hamilton Island to watch the popstar play in one of Australia’s most iconic holiday destinations. Fans will be able to win access to the event through Nova and its partner channels from 2 November.
Qantas, a long time sponsor of the Nova Red Room, has signed on again as its travel partner along with Hamilton Island and Frontier Touring. Qantas recently supported the company in its Red Room Global Tour earlier this year.
The other part of the value offering from brands who sign on as partners is content. Not only will Nova and its brand partners be able to tap into the huge social media following that Swift has on her own social accounts, Nova chief marking and digital officer Tony Thomas told AdNews it is moving beyond just collating the content of the gig itself. Instead, he said it is focusing more on the “experience” aspect of the event, and building in content for the experiences that happen in between.
“This becomes an experience that doesn't just last for two hours,” Thomas said. “While that is the pinnacle, there is also the travel experience on Qantas, and the holiday experience on Hamilton Island. It might be absolutely focused on the music experience but we also want to capture the lead-in and the outcome of the experience and that becomes a much bigger play than just the standalone music event.
While the first Nova Red Room event was launched nearly three years ago, Thomas said the event has rapidly grown since then. He said that now more than ever there is a huge increase in demand for brand to be associated with big music properties which means Nova is planning on increasing the scale of Red Room going forward.
“Music is such an emotional part of people's lives and so for a brand to connect themselves to such a strong passion point is a huge plus,” he said.
“We've moving more and more from a transactional to an experience economy and to create an experience that brands are attached to is a powerful driver.”
“We've had 90 Red Rooms and they've been diverse experiences and have been held in diverse countries. Continuing to challenge ourselves on how we implement each one is a focus. It's all about surprising the market.”
Thomas said this latest event highlights what it sees as its point of difference for the Red Room platform; building premium experiences for brands and fans alike.
“Over the last three years we've really invested behind the Red Room brand to make sure we built its credentials as a pre-eminent live music brand. Having one of the biggest artists in the world in such an iconic Australian location is really the penultimate for us,” Thomas said.
“Nova Red Room is a very agile brand and this showcases how agile it can be regarding where we can hold events, how quickly we can hold them and how big an idea we can wrap around it.”
“This isn't something that happens in a standard location, we like to challenge ourselves on the scale and exclusivity of the idea.”
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