The Leaked Fyre Festival Pitch Deck Is Beyond Parody | Hacker News Reader

The Leaked Fyre Festival Pitch Deck Is Beyond Parody

vanityfair.com

134 pointstaylorbuley113 comments

If it had not been a complete and utter failure, the pitch deck would have been just another unremarkable example of marketing/PR fluffery, and wouldn't have been worth commenting on.

Doesn't look any different from media marketing I've seen for things that were successful.

Agreed. It was definitely a failure in execution not necessarily in vision. If done right it kinda sounds like a dope experience.

I'm highly skeptical that no matter how successful the logistics could have been, that I could ever describe anything involving Blink 182 as a "dope experience".

haha true

If you're looking for BS marketing-speak this is amateur work.

Want to see the pros? Sit back and watch Arnell take it (and Pepsi) to the next level: https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell....

There's literally a slide that references "light path with gravitational pull" -> "gravitational pull of Pepsi", "relativity of space and time" -> "Pepsi aisle."

Or the slide referencing the expansion of the universe to explain "the Pepsi orbits"

Among my favorite documents of all-time.

I had totally forgotten about this. I'm still not sure if it's a joke or not.

The fact that this cost 1M is what takes all the fun out of it. My guess is a mid-level designer scratched something out in a few weeks and then they said: well, shit; we need to make it look like we spent a lot of money and time on this. Get some nerds in here and have them write down some geometry phrases.

It's actually depressing once you think about it how much companies will pay for bullshit like this and very little for other things. Salesmanship I guess.

I actually find the 1M part to be the most funny.

Is this real? This is genuinely one of the funniest and most absurd documents I have ever seen in my life. I am crying I am laughing so hard. I genuinely hope someone pitched this to Pepsi

EDIT: I have confirmed this is from a real creative agency, but was purely for entertainment and was not a real pitch deck.

Apparently it's real!

http://www.newsweek.com/crazy-genius-brand-guru-peter-arnell...

  1 Light Year  = Pepsi Planet

  2 Light Years = Pepsi Galaxy

  8 Light Years = Pepsi Universe

Man, that's a small universe. To be fair though, it's clearly marked as an unfinished draft.

I much prefer the Pepsi Parsec as a unit of measurement.

In all seriousness, parsec is a horrific unit of measurement. It's really annoying how many non-SI units are used in Astrophysics literature. For me the most insane one is that some Asteroseismologists (study of variability in stars) use cycles per day as a unit of measurement as opposed to uHz (the conversion factor is around 11).

I think most of it arose from the idea that astronomy is about logging as much of the sky as you can in the most efficient way you can(there's a lot of it), and everyone else can put in the work to use their measurements in other disciplines. Sadly, that mindset went on to astrophysics where it's not too helpful.

From mocking Pepsi advertisements to discussing astrophysics in three comments.

I think it's more about the insane devotion to backwards compatibility (which rivals Linus Torvalds). I mean, the whole object colour thing (where the community discovered that their classification system was completely wrong) was handled by just reordering the classification (but keeping the names) so that old papers and catalogs could be used verbatim is true devotion.

> it's clearly marked as an unfinished draft.

Hey, I know some people with astronomy degrees that'll take a high six figure salary from a BS marketing agency to be their on staff astrophysicist. 4 hours of real work a month, tops.

If you have anything else remotely this funny could you please share it, I am having convulsions

Please, for the sake of this person's well-being, don't share any more slides!

I think Coke's pitch deck goes something like:

- Never acknowledge the existence of Pepsi.

- Always be classic.

- Always be timeless.

I think brands that work well do so because they keep a simple message and avoid the allure of self-justifying marketing people.

Their product is also simply better. More people prefer it. The best mousetrap is still a big lever.

Double blind tests say otherwise.

The double blind tests rely on the fact that a small dose of extra sweetness is more palatable. However, a large dose is cloying.

Also, they both taste like garbage. Drink coffee, instead.

You misspelled tea.

>Drink coffee, instead.

And now i'm anxious and sitting on the toilet.

Only when Pepsi rigged it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Challenge#Criticism

Ironically, that slideshow PDF just about made my laptop's fan explode.

To be fair, the marketing was actually very successful. They got people to the event. I would call this a remarkable example of fluffery.

Yep. The only thing they didn't accomplish was disappearing with the cash at the end.

Step 1) Collect underpants

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Profit!

That's kind of the problem. It is, as you say, fluffery - designed to arouse desire rather than to inform. And we already have far too much of this.

An insider who saw the failure coming (includes a promo video also like parody) ... http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/04/fyre-festival-exumas-bahamas...

On Wednesday, Ja Rule arrived for a “site visit.” I don’t know if he actually visited the “site” but he did spend a lot of time on a yacht, according to his Instagram. Meanwhile the event planners were holed up indoors putting together a game plan and a budget. With so little having been prepared ahead of time, the official verdict was that it would take $50 million to pull off. Planners also warned that it would be not be up to the standard they had advertised. The best idea, they said, would be to roll everyone’s tickets over to 2018 and start planning for the next year immediately. They had a meeting with the Fyre execs to deliver the news. A guy from the marketing team said, “Let’s just do it and be legends, man.”

This paragraph is amazing, I bet you can find an anecdote pretty similar in the startup world..

> “Let’s just do it and be legends, man.”

Well, mission accomplished I suppose.

Best line is at the end:

> They overlooked so many very basic things. And baby, they forgot to make me sign an NDA.

What are the odds that they made plenty of legal mistakes in addition to the logistical ones? I would bet that everyone involved in this will have a very bad time over the next few months and years, and anyone who backed it financially will think harder before committing serious money when all they've seen is a slick marketing campaign.

Fyre Festival feels like something Jon Ralphio (Parks and Rec) would put together.

Meanwhile the UN Refugee agency reported that one of their warehouses had been looted and many of their tents were stolen http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.3122436.14936470...

;)

Is there a word for that slightly scummy, uncomfortable feeling you're left with after reading a particularly empty piece of marketing drivel?

German probably has one.

Werbungsleereschmierigkeitsgefühl, maybe.

google managed to index this within 2 hours and so it now shows this comment as the only instance of that "word" on the internet

That's so Werbungsleereschmierigkeitsgefühl

I'm trying to imagine some sort of word that combines nauseated with loathing. I'm sure in German you can concatenate a word together.

Not specific to the context but "despair" seems to fit.

I believe you're referring to the "douche chills"

I think it is the 'rock and roll' narcissism that is making your skin cringe so painfully! Traits include:

Grandiosity with expectations of superior treatment from others

Fixated on fantasies of power, success, intelligence, attractiveness, etc.

Self-perception of being unique, superior and associated with high-status people and institutions

Needing constant admiration from others

Sense of entitlement to special treatment and to obedience from others

Exploitative of others to achieve personal gain

Unwilling to empathize with others' feelings, wishes, or needs

Intensely envious of others and the belief that others are equally envious of them

Signs and symptoms - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disor...

The same personality defect leads to monumental fails, so people on the project only concern themselves with what they have been hired for, so if you are a writer (e.g.) and hired to be some influencer/journalist then you care about your ego as writer and not care about whether the event is going to be a viable financial concern. So the whole thing suits the build someone up and then discard way these people work.

If it exists, its German.

The funny thing about this whole shit show is that could have been me.

Before transitioning to tech in SF, I had a career in the entertainment industry down in LA. My buddy pitched me with marketing jargon just like this for a Coachella style festival, and I got sucked in.

We spent on and off a year working on it and actually made decent progress. The biggest band we had on board was Pearl Jam.

Eventually it became obvious we were in over our heads and that my buddy had no idea what he was doing.

Yep. Before I got into technology, I was a lighting designer, and still dabble on and off. Producing a safe, quality, decent-sized event is hard and it is even harder to do so profitably. Every now and again someone asks me to be part of organising something, and my answer is always "no, thanks for asking, and please rethink your plans". I have seen too many experienced organisers fail at this - even when you do everything right, things can still go badly.

Definitely. To get anywhere near profitable you need to have the right people and to be in it for the long haul.

"Fyre has a unique goal and inspiration: the exploration of the uncharted inspired by and referencing the five elements of the earth"

...oh

Was this generated by a Markov chain?

Earth, Fyre, Wind, Water, Heart?

Yrth, Fyre, Wynd, Watyr, Hyrt

Cyptyn plynyt here.

Tonight, on http://www.syfy.com/

https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell...

LOL, I forgot about that. Staggering genius is rarely understood in its own time.

I don't know whether to be happy or sad that Umberto Eco didn't live to see that.

I would like to see a deep analysis of it written by the Timecube guy.

He did, though. The Pepsi thing was from '08, Eco died in '16.

This is magical.

Aysh, Mytal, Wyyd, Watyr, and Fyre. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Xing

Social media has really become a cesspool. All these "influencers" promoting crap without a single care for their actions.

It's like how the search landscape was about 10 years back. Google clamping down on terrible affiliate pages was the best thing to happen to search.

Social media needs similar policing.

I have never seen such a large group of pretentious vain B-ark candidates before in my life.

Yeah, these bozos make telephone sanitizers look downright useful.

I thought the moral was that telephone sanitizers ended up being the most important people in the world.

Is it irony that in our current age of handled-daily-but-never-washed smartphones, telephone sanitizer could actually be a useful job?

yep, telephone sanitizers have always been useful. In fact when it comes to sanitizing things in the world, the more the better. Humans are filthy.

but most of other people there really were pretty bad.e.g use leaves as money then burn down all forests to increase scarcity and drive up the value of their leaves.

"The cultural experience of the decade"

I mean they may have got that part right.

You know it will become a boast to have been there a few years from now. I just got back myself, I could tell you some stories if you were to ah, hook me up.

The post states they sought $25M in funding. Curious to know if they were successful in closing that amount.

I'm curious about that too. They must have gotten close or raised all of it, as they actually attempted to have the event.

Didn't they raise a lot of cash by selling tickets at absurd prices and still not have the funds to achieve details like paying artists and providing the standard of accommodation they promised?

Never mind the non-ironic use of the "ideate" and "brand synergy" and multiple pages of Instagram influencers, the thing which should have raised alarm bells is that a large leadership team appears to not include a single person responsible for logistics. I realise marketing matters for these things, but when your product is an overseas music festival, you probably want to be emphasising people's responsibilities for overseeing the assembly of the venue, flights and accommodation, permits, security, contractors' responsibilities etc ahead of the front end developer for the website. I don't you need the benefit of hindsight to see the former might be a bigger challenge

"We've crafted a team of rockstars ... Combined we've sold 60 MM records worldwide"

Glad to hear they're giving the whole team credit for those sales numbers.

For some reason, the fact that it was Ja Rule makes it even more morbidly funny. The only reason people remember Ja anymore is because of Dave Chapelle's bit, and that was in the context of an actually huge disaster - 9/11

As evidenced by sources such as 1 and 2, the management at Fyre are not the kind of people who will accept responsibility, or blame.

Knowing how big the budget was, how much money and influence the people involved wield, and how out-of-balance the US legal system is, I feel extremely bad for the various contractors who will inevitably get sued to oblivion for this mess. I can just imagine how it feels, trying to to do your best with a boss who won't accept no for an answer, then being forced into bankruptcy once things go sideways.

1) http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/04/fyre-festival-exumas-bahamas... 2) https://twitter.com/Ruleyork/status/858025172942675968

I think it'd be nice if ad-blockers would block influencers.

I know you meant it as a joke, but I would honestly pay for a browser plug in that automatically blocked any mention of people with more than X Instagram followers. I don't want to live on the same planet as those pretentious idiots.

The slide deck contains words like ideate... I wonder if these slides will _inspire_ VCs in the bay area and/or the show Silicon Valley... as I understand it they did raise a lot of capital and even if they are forced to give 1/2 of back that's a pretty good return for not doing any actual work.

Are these "influencers" paid for what they're doing? Is there a paper trail?

Or were they as swept up in the hype as everyone else, blithely talking it up for that reason?

If the former, what culpability do they have in any potential lawsuit?

> On Monday, the festival organizers were accused by attendees of fraud and were sued for $100 million. It might only be a matter of time before the Fyre Starters are part of a lawsuit, too.

That would be cool :)

Reality Fyre fueled twitter photos

http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/04/sad-and-funny-tweets-from...

Well, the pitch deck more or less did offer something different, to be part of something new, to make them think etc.

They undoubtedly delivered.

The real question is how long until someone kickstarts a fyrefest gone right.

The whole concept of Fyre Fest I'd leveraging social media influencers to extract money from the influenced; it's it exactly a Kickstarter-friendly concept (well, unless you use the influencers to promote a KS itself.)

As to a Kickstarted festival of the type Fyre purported to offer purchasers, it seems to be explicitly prohibited by Kickstarter's terms, falling squarely into the travel services / vacation packages prohibition.

The Lyre Festival.

Or Dire, as it were.

Sorry, but I loved the pitch, it's a pitch not a business plan, it's a bit silly but it's also exciting.

Sorry, I love the idea -

"Throughout the next five years, we will traverse the globe to find untouched lands and convert them into unparalleled experiences. Fyre will work to bring life to each region.'

What's with all the hate?

I wasn't even that expensive for a concert, a lot of people from overseas pay that amount to go to Burning Man. Save for a few years and it's possible for most people on HN.

Whats with HN reveling in failure in this startup?

Maybe because it's a couple of clueless rich bros trying to marry Burning Man with Goa and completely missing the point of both?

> [Kendall Jenner] stands as part of, and representative of, the Fyre tribe.

Well...yeah, that's about right.

Here's a direct link to the deck itself: https://www.scribd.com/document/346949516/Fyre-Festival-Pitc...

Link is private

Yeah, I thought I included the full link, but a URL parameter seems to have gotten lost somewhere. Oh well!

Disappointing that HN of all places couldn't be a little more discerning when reviewing this. Because from what I've heard there was a legitimate business problem that Fyre was attempting to solve. (1) All of the middle men between talent and event organisers and (2) the lack of luxury concert events.

Are they completely inept at following through with this ? Yes. But the idea wasn't that bad. And they deserve credit for getting so many celebrities on board.

I agree. All of this may appear incredibly douchy, but they had a viable business model. Now that they are most certainly finished, there should be plenty of opportunity for someone else to totally steal the idea. Hopefully not someone as incompetent and lazy.

> All of this may appear incredibly douchy, but they had a viable business model.

Where, exactly, did the viability of their business model get demonstrated?

'Find cheap land and exploit it' has a long if not exactly distinguished history.

In this case it is arguable whether it was actually cheap, after having the transport everything to a remote location.

How about by the fact that it the marketing plan worked, the hype was there, and the tickets sold out?

Couldn't you say the same thing about homeopathy?

Which is obviously a viable business model. I ludicrously dishonest and insane one, but it makes money.

They're having to refund the whole thing. The profitability was temporary based on an unrealistic offering. It's only a viable business model if it's possible to actually set up and provide the amenities - gourmet food, luxurious stay, expensive musical acts - which certainly hasn't been demonstrated.

Except that perhaps all those middle men in between talent and event organizers are what make an event successful?

Complaining about "middle men" is not dissimilar to complaining about "the Man" keeping you down. Is there a largess of utterly pointless people in a large bureaucratic organizations? Surely. Are all those "middle men" that take money in exchange for coordinating setting up and tearing down Cochella profit monsters? No, probably not. Lots of them are quite necessary, as Mr. McFarland and Mr. Rule just discovered.

If you want to pay some C-list "celebrity" to just show up at your party that doesn't take much in the way of middle men. So booking those appearances might be a viable niche business.

Gotta be honest if that's what Fyre was attempting to solve, they've made a great case for the middlemen.

I do agree that surely something must explain why all these high-profile celebrities went along with this. Did they actually think nobody would notice the end result somehow, or were they duped too?

I mean, shocker, but the music business works the same way every other business does - through relationships. It's not Craigslist. There aren't really that many middle men between bands and the festivals/clubs that book them, unless you count the booking agents and managers, which I assure you are still getting a cut regardless of how the gig gets booked.

I think HN just has a low tolerance for willful incompetence, especially when charging gigantic fees to the consumer. As has been pointed out by other articles, despite many warning signs that this festival would be impossible to pull off as advertised, the organizers continued to crank the hype machines into turbo mode while slurping up cash from consumers till the last minute. It's a scam.

Well if you think about the fact that almost every startup that goes through YC raises probably $1M+ after demo day, and 9 out of 10 investments likely to lose, but hey move fast and break things as long as it's not a concert for rich people.

In fact your comment could just as well be about many "unicorns" in tech who seem far more than willfully incompetant (e.g. Theranos; Uber); or according to who you ask Etherium (for being hacked and/or forking); and from the sound of press maybe MagicLeap the billion dollar startup who cant seem To launch a product may end up fitting the mold.

Uber had over 5 billion dollars in net revenue last year. Theranos had zero.

Well, Theranos and Etherium are met with frequent criticism on this board with good reason, but the issue isn't about losing out on an investment - which is obviously a risk with any company and clearly not applicable in the case of Uber - but rather, negligent, reckless or fraudulent behavior dressed up in tons of marketing buzz and obfuscated by insane levels of hype that functions only to inflate the ego and perceived prestige of the founders while simultaneously fleecing consumers of their money. The bigger the hype to inevitable-reality gap, the bigger the schadenfreude payoff when the scammer house of cards finally collapses in on itself.

> negligent, reckless or fraudulent behavior dressed up in tons of marketing buzz and obfuscated by insane levels of hype

Sounds like Uber to me.

Yes people got rides and it's a good product, but they still took operations to cities/counties all over the world illegally. Drivers are the ones who are stuck holding the with damaged driving records, and in some cases criminal records, for nothing more that operating under Uber. For example in Miami alone there are still $3.5M worth of outstanding fines from drivers when they were illegally operating as rides for hire.

Multiple that by how many cities? Then extend that business model for to any other illegal activity: drugs, prostitution, murder for hire, etc... but you know hype ($50B unicorn) and marketing buzz (disrupting, sharing economy).

9 out of 10 investments likely to lose

That's true of startups in general but not true of startups that goes through YC. The success rate of YC startups is far higher than normal.

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