Steve Mandy

This festival happens every year in October. It’s a festival of food as the name suggests.

I was asked to coordinate the social media marketing effort. A committee was formed. Time was of the essence. We were already in August and the event was in a little over 2 months time. I had the strategy all worked out.

I knew what I wanted to do, and I also knew that if I waited for the committee to approve each post before it went out, we would end up doing nothing. Lots of discussion about the font, the colour, the image, oh, my word. Disaster.

So, I just posted what I felt would gel with the target market. Six posts a week for seven weeks. The committee was getting frantic. They had lost control. This man was just posting stuff without any consultation.

I was fired in the last week running up to the event. Told not to post any more because my posts were “Confusing the public”. I was a loose cannon. I had worked frantically to deliver the message over the last 2 months only to be fired in the last week.

They realized pretty quickly, that if I wasn’t putting out posts, nobody was. I was invited to start posting again. I finished the job. The campaign attracted double the amount of people to the Fishguard Food Festival than the committee had set as the target.

It was successful beyond all expectations.

The story doesn’t end here.

The stage was set for an effortless marketing plan for 2024 as long as…

• The name didn’t change
• They kept the logo the same or similar
• The Facebook group was kept in place

This is what the committee did in my absence.

• Changed the name dramatically
• Changed the logo dramatically
• Deleted the Facebook group. and dumped all the people who joined it.

All the markers that the public have come to recognize, all the branding gone.

How do we look now for the 2024 event? Still pretty good. Last years event was so successful, its almost impossible for the event to flop. The event will attract many more visitors than last year. So, is it necessary to keep all those markers the public had become to know, like and trust? No, there is still enough goodwill out there to make it happen.

It’s frustrating though. I am still being guided by well meaning people who don’t really understand marketing and don’t understand social media. Things like the difference between groups and pages and their roles. Things like starting a marketing campaign too early because the public eventually get marketing fatigue and start scrolling past your posts.

How to combat the autocratic bureaucracy.

Committee;s need to be managed. How do I prevent intervention in my strategy?

Here’s what I decided.

I will put together a presentation to affirm the strategy for 2024. By showing them what the plan is, I hope to get buy in into the strategy. Hopefully, they will feel more comfortable about giving me the space I need to do my thing. Hopefully, I can avoid being fired for the second year running.

I will generate another post later in the year to let you know how it progresses, so, keep in touch.