Rock and a Hard Place
LOS ANGELES Hard Rock Cafe becomes lead sponsor for a sort-of new rock festival next month when 12 top bands hit the stage in Atlanta for the first Hard Rock RockFest. The concert is expected to draw more than 150,000 young adults.
The restaurant chain tapped into the concert by signing a three-year deal with Warner/TBA, Time Warner’s entertainment marketing and special events production unit. Warner/TBA staged the first RockFest in 1997 with Blockbuster as lead sponsor.
“We were looking to do a concert of this magnitude,” says John Hughes, Hard Rock’s manager of strategic alliances. “We decided it was best to leverage an existing franchise rather than try to brand something completely from scratch.”
But Hard Rock, which established a separate Hard Rock Productions division last year to develop these kinds of brand extensions, considers the event “not just a one-day concert, but a full marketing program,” Hughes says. The Atlanta festival kicks off a series of smaller concerts held at or near Hard Rock restaurants around the country. The chain will promote through national print and radio ads, as well as through all 43 U.S. restaurants.
Lansing, MI-based GM division Oldsmobile signed on for three years as exclusive presenting sponsor, lenthening the concert’s official name to Hard Rock RockFest presented by Oldsmobile Alero. Morris Plains, NJ-based Certs is also in for three years. Electronics chain Circuit City, Discover Card and Time Warner-owned Entertainment Weekly are on board for the 1999 event.
“The sponsors have been wonderful,” says Hughes. “We’ve been pleased with what they’ve come up with on their own, and with their desire to work with each other.”
Hard Rock is running a sweeps that will dish out five million scratch-and-win gamecards, half through restaurants and half through Circuit City outlets. Grand prize is an Alero; secondary prizes include tickets, CDs, and stereos.
Dealer promos at Oldsmobile include the automaker’s now standard strategy of offering free tickets in exchange for a test drive. Oldsmobile will park a customized Alero outside some Hard Rock resturants, and have a showcase at the concert. The cars will be stationed near a 121-square-foot Hard Rock Cafe constructed at the Atlanta Motor Speedway venue. Frankel & Co., Chicago, handles Alero promos.
Certs lends a hand to the restaurant promos running until the June 5 concert with samples, VIP cards, and a free dessert-with-Certs-purchase offer delivered in check presenters. At the event, it will sponsor the misting tents – a must for concerts at Georgia racetracks – and pass out samples.
The brand is working with radio stations in 25 markets on a ticket giveaway in which the grand prize winner gets a chartered plane to the show accompanied by his/her favorite D.J. And it gets things rolling for next year with a sweeps for tickets to the 2000 concert via an ad in Entertainment Weekly. Chicago-based Flair Communications handles for Certs.
Discover Card pitched the concert via statement inserts to nine million members, who had a nine-day window to buy tickets before they went on sale nationally.
The concert’s lineup includes Better Than Ezra, Collective Soul, Everlast, Sugar Ray, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Offspring, New Radicals, and Silverchair.
