The Advertising at a Reggae Music Festival

Last weekend, I attended the California Roots Music Festival, a massive gathering for reggae admirers and people alike. While I was there for 2 days, I made sure to pay attention to the use of advertising around me while jamming out to some bomb artists.

If it's not too hard to believe, the content that was highly touted was rather stoney. By this, I mean that the marijuana industry was a big presence at the festival. This should be no big surprise, as for marijuana is iconically associated with the roots of reggae. Anyhow, let's take a look at some of the things I saw.

 Behind the dread-locked, beanie wearing man is one of the main stages at the festival. The screen graphic seen in the photo is what everyone sees while waiting for the artist to preform. Take note at who "presents" the Cali Roots Stage. Yup, the main stage of the festival is sponsored by "weedmaps", a website that beholds a marijuana community and features marijuana dispensaries. They also had their logo at every water filling station at the festival. They got the most exposure out of any company/brand that I saw.

You know those booths at events where you can get free stuff if you listen to the person there trying to sell you things; they were at this festival too. However, these booths purveyed smoking apparatus and similar type products. One of the booths was advertising a marijuana e-cigarrette. They had a line of people going on for 15 feet out of their booth. Did all these people, including me and my buddies, want the e-cigarrete? No, I was in line waiting for the free cotton candy they were giving out. But inevitably, their groovy looking sales people tried to get people in line to check out their product, and some did. I thought this was great; get a bunch people to wait at your booth and sell them things.

Of course, all the vendors, sponsors, and advertisements out at the festival weren't marijuana related, but the majority was. This "high" presence of weed related products at the reggae festival was no accident. What happened here was bringing the right stuff to the right market. While marijuana is part of the culture of reggae, you can expect a bunch of weed-loving people to attend a reggae festival. So,  the marijuana industry takes advantage of the opportunity and presents things/products that a lot of people want to see. It's genius.

The act of marketers advertising to people that they would most appeal to is a phenomenon that we explored earlier in class this semester. It's just like broadcasting a Bernie Sanders ad campaign to a liberal leaning city; except this festival broadcasted marijuana products to reggae listening, herb smokers.