Ottawa's FaveQuest lets festivals manage every facet of social media experience
Live events like concerts and festivals are already social events — so do they really need any help with social media?
Turns out they do; or at least they needed it enough to provide an opportunity for Ottawa entrepreneur Allan Isfan and his self-funded venture FaveQuest. His company manages the complete spectrum of social media needs for festivals and concerts, including stand-alone websites, Facebook and Twitter presences (including apps) and mobile content. Among its clients, FaveQuest counts the Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest, Music and Beyond, and even the prestigious Just For Laughs festival in Montreal.
In addition to these big-name events, Isfan’s company is helping smaller festivals with tighter budgets a better way to connect with fans and potential sponsors.
“A lot of these festivals are sponsorship-driven,” Isfan explains. “The one thing they realized using our stuff last year is that sponsors were more prominent. The brands were integrated into the website better and people were coming to the site more and staying longer. Now they are finding sponsors are coming to them to close bigger deals.”
Word of FaveQuest’s accomplishments is spreading to the United States, where festivals depend far more on sponsorships than many Canadian events. The interest is creating big opportunities for the Ottawa firm.
Most festivals, Isfan notes, still rely on traditional advertising to attract patrons.
“They are realizing they need to do something else, but they aren’t sure what that is,” he adds. “We’ve caught the market in this transition between the way they used to do things and the way they want to do things.”
Perhaps the highlight of FaveQuest’s suite of services is their social video calendar, ViewTube. It’s a module that can be dropped into any website and displays videos from festival performers, and allows site visitors to manage a festival visit by adding those performers to their calendar. The visitors can share videos and entire calendars with friends, and because they can use their Facebook IDs to log in, the odds of someone actually doing this is pretty high. The video at the top of this article explains other features of ViewTube.
For more info on FaveQuest, click here.
