‘Adelaide Fringe is a cultural lucky dip with artists from around the world and around the corner wanting to entertain the people of Adelaide.’ (www.talkfringe.com.au)

The Adelaide Fringe started in 1960 alongside the Adelaide Festival, enabling artists and performers the opportunity to register and showcase their talents to willing audiences (www.adelaidefringe.com.au). The Fringe ran every second year until 2007 where it was stage annually. It is an event ‘renowned for fresh ideas, risk, imagination, spontaneity, and fun. It is the largest arts event in Australia and only rivaled by the Edinburgh Fringe on a worldwide scale.’ (www.adelaidefringe.com.au). I will be looking at these 6 areas, mission/vision, funding/sponsorship, programming, management, marketing, and staffing.

The Mission statement for the Fringe festival is: ‘To be an internationally acclaimed open access arts festival for artists and audiences’ (www.adelaidefringe.com.au). Over the years the festival has seen the number of artists registering to perform increasing. The Adelaide Fringe Festival is action packed for just over 3 weeks in March every year. The artists pay a one off registration fee which includes listing in the official guide, as well as assistance with services such as ticketing and venue sourcing, plus equipment and accommodation (www.peterlehmannwines.com). According to the Fringe website (www.adelaidefringe.com.au), they had 759 registered events this year alone which economically speaking is a 28% increase from 2010 across the state.

The vision/goals of the Fringe are:
• To be recognised throughout the world as the best arts festival in Australia and the Asia Pacific region
• To be the pre-eminent marketplace for Australian, Asia Pacific and international presenters
• To grow audiences annually
• To grow the number and diversity of events, artists, art-forms and venues
• To be an outstanding, sustainable business
(www.adelaidefringe.com.au)

These are pretty ambitions goals and would take years to achieve and to determine the success of each goal. To determine the continued growth of audiences would be challenging due to the fact that a lot of people attend multiple shows, so therefore number of tickets sold is not a direct correlation to number of people attending. So, how is this achieved? I feel that to get an accurate figure would be difficult, so I would look at how many tickets are sold at the various outlets each year and where the purchaser is from via postcode survey. Any increases or decreases can be noted as well as any new postcodes i.e. from interstate or overseas.
I believe the festival has succeeded in creating diversity in the areas mentioned. A contributing factor is the availability of over 300 venues this year alone (www.adelaidefringe.com.au). Of course a venue will need to suit the artist not only for their performance but also for their expected crowd sizes. The venues themselves benefit from having such involvement with the Fringe not just generating extra revenue and notability, but also gaining flexibility in the future to host events there after the Fringe is over.

Looking at their goal of being an outstanding sustainable business in conjunction with wanting to grow in diversity in the above mentioned areas, I can’t help but feel that there is a possibility that the Fringe could be their worst enemy. It seems possible to me that by growing in diversity could at some point reach saturation in the Adelaide market. Gets (2002) explores the theory of product life cycles where the 4 stages are introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Gets (2002, pg 215) continues to suggest that ‘most new events are now entering a crowded field occupied by many similar events, and this fact can be very important – particularly in that competition for resources and consumers must be a major consideration’. It needs to be understood the reasons people come to an event like the Fringe. According to Dimmock (2001) people come in the ‘pursuit of leisure, relaxation, and recreation’. Perhaps a solution to minimize the possible saturation of the market could be to reduce the amount of shows per year, and to keep the shows current, to keep the audience guessing. Meaning the shows need to be a combination of issues that affect the community/world to get a better perspective as well as being able to blow the audience away – to create imagination.

The Adelaide Fringe is a festival that thrives off sponsorship. It has a symbiotic relationship with a vast range of businesses. According to Kotler, Bowen, and Makens (1999) symbiotic partnerships of 2 or more companies/businesses allows combined capital, production capabilities or marketing resources to achieve levels that perhaps one company cannot on their own. The Fringe website is suggesting that by aligning with the festival allows the business to reach key demographics and a strong public response (www.adelaidefringe.com.au). ). According to Dimmock (2001) sponsorship can mean the difference between success and failure of the festival. There is always going to be some benefit to the sponsoring companies whether it is financially or free advertising. Due to the instability of the global economy in recent years with the Global Financial Crisis and now with what’s happening in Greece, there is a risk involved in having so many companies involved. If one element is under pressure how many others will it affect? The Fringe has 6 major partners including BankSA and the Government of SA, as well as 29 key partners (www.adelaidefringecom.au).

Although the Fringe has sponsors and business partners, BankSA being the major one, I found it surprising that the artists themselves are using their money to put on the shows. Are they going to get enough profit to make it worthwhile so that they return? We see a lot of high profile acts returning but what about the lesser known performances? According to Greg Clarke (Director and Chief Executive of the Adelaide Fringe) a big focal point is: “how can we get audiences finding new venues and new artists, getting out there and really digging into the program and seeing a bunch of stuff they never would have seen? We heavily promote that side of it, whereas the big name comedians we don’t have to promote at all.” (www.artshub.com.au)

Fringe Benefits is a not for profit program setup to offer discounts to people aged between 18 and 30 as well as people associated with the arts industry. This program, since it began in 2006 ‘has over 13,000 members which has assisted the local community by engaging young audiences’ (www.adelaidefringe.com.au).

The Fringe has a Youth Engagement Program (YEP) which assists teachers to find shows suitable to school students all of year levels for educational purposes. Part of this program includes discounted tickets, teacher notes, and possible in school shows (www.adelaidefringe.com.au). ‘In 2009, about 4700 students and teachers attended the Adelaide Fringe YEP shows. This has grown by more than 300 in 2011’ (www.adelaidenow.com.au).

Programming is an interesting issue. For me, potential problems with having too many shows on at the same time are that the audience has a lot to choose and budget for, limited time over the 3 weeks to see shows, and the venues are scattered all over Adelaide so traveling between shows could be a problematic. From a personal point, I work in Hospitality and do shift work over a 7 day roster doing around 60hours per week on average, I didn’t get a chance to see any shows that I wanted to this year due to work commitments for one. I am not alone. Having so many shows to choose from and, agreed that each show has multiple dates, I still found it challenging to get to one show let alone 2 or 3. I think that this has a lot to do with trying to read the program and digest all the information about each show to try and decide what to see. As the Fringe attracts a lot of high profile International and local acts, people are happy to pay money to see shows they know are “safe”. It takes more of a risk to see a lesser known act with the potential for it to be disappointing. According to Greg Clarke, via the Fringe website (www.adelaidefringe.com.au) believes that audiences are branching out from their comforts zones to experience new and undiscovered talents. ‘A downside to a fringe is the potential to become too large with hundreds of shows competing for the same audience’ (Gets 2009).

On a positive note regarding the programming, is that there is such a vast range of shows that incorporates dance, theatre, puppetry, circus, films, music, and comedy. The festival attracts so many people by having such a diverse range of shows. Audiences get to explore cultures without leaving their own country. We get to see other views on world issues (although some comedic some serious) such as terrorism, environment and global warming, plus other hot topics seen today.

Management of the festival is important to make sure everything is running to schedule as well as remaining viable and competitive. The Adelaide Fringe used to be a biannual event rather than the annually occurrence as we see today. An issue with this is potentially high profile acts may not want to attend every year. I noticed that this year comedy acts such as Ross Noble and Jimoein, to name just two, were not performing. Every time these artists always sell out. So perhaps if the festival remained a 2 yearly event, it becomes rarer and perhaps more lucrative and desired festival to attract high profile acts.

Another issue that needs to be explored is how do we keep the audience coming back for more? How do we keep them interested? Marketing has a role to play in this along with programming and artists involved. Due to Adelaide being “festival central” during March each year, Public Relations committees need to implement novel ways to keep audiences with the added bonus of attracting people for the first time. In 2011, The Adelaide Fringe has implemented the “Fringe caravan” which is a caravan taken on road to Melbourne and Sydney where local artists showcased their talents. Clarke recognizes that ‘it’s such a great and unique event, so how do we get people from interstate coming?’ (www.artshub.com.au) and that this was an important marketing step that promoted the spirit of the Fringe Festival. Of course there are certain amounts of risk involved when implementing a strategy like this. To make it viable and successful, participation and willingness from artists is needed. Also time and the ability to absorb the costs of purchasing the caravan as well as the other travelling costs along the way. The upside of this would be to gain more patronage which turns into ticket sales in the years to come. Something as unique as this possibly doesn’t have a long life span so therefore new ideas need to be developed constantly. The effectiveness and success of a strategy like this is hard to assess in the short term. The question that comes to mind is: how can we establish how successful the caravan has been in generating crowd numbers which equals a potential revenue increase? The simplest way to establish this is ask the audience via a survey questions relating to the caravan i.e. have you heard about the caravan? If yes, did you get a chance to see any of the shows? Was the caravan a deciding factor for you to come to the Fringe? Although it isn’t 100% foolproof in terms of getting an accurate figure, it enables analysis to help understand the effectiveness of the caravan to see if the message it portrays is working.

Another interesting marketing strategy is their poster competition. Each year the Adelaide Fringe invites the public to create a poster to use for the next Fringe festival. Public participation is a very powerful marketing technique. ‘Festivals and events demonstrate the popular definitions of a sense of community through offering connections, belonging, support, empowerment, participation, and safety (Derret, R 2003).

Venue planning is another essential area that management needs to consider. ‘Careful consideration needs to be made of where people are likely to come from to facilitate routes to carparks and to minimize traffic problems’ (Salem, Jones, and Morgan 2004 pg 27). It has been known that during peak time of the Fringe that it can be quite congested in the city, the roads are busy and the carparks full. Cafés in Rundle Street are the ultimate winners during the Fringe with increased business due to an increase in foot traffic.

Staffing at the Fringe festival is an interesting topic to look at. Each venue that is used during the festival uses their own staff in conjunction with Fringe volunteers. Volunteers ‘are particularly important in the implementation of festivals and cultural events and can work in most roles, including organizing committees’ (Salem, Jones, and Morgan 2004 pg 26). On the Fringe website each year they advertise for volunteers to be involved in certain areas as well as paid employment.

‘To be successful a festival should reflect the character of its host community, provide a unique and attractive product and meet the needs of its citizens and visitors’ (Schofield, cited in Dimmock 2001 pg 21). I believe that the Fringe festival is one of those festivals that would only work in certain areas around the world. Adelaide is one of these places that are able to embrace such uniqueness and even though we can be seen as a conservative market – secretly we love that shock value some shows deliver. Even with the potential, perhaps slight possibility that there could be saturation, I feel that the Fringe will survive and be successful for many years. The only main concern that would affect the success of the Fringe, and that would be the economic stability we are seeing in the world currently. Australia was lucky enough to survive the Global Financial Crisis, but are we going to be so lucky to survive the next? Are we going to see any impact from the situation in Greece – where they are looking for financial assistance due to poor economic management? These are all important issues that need to be analyzed to ensure survival. The solutions are not always clear. The Fringe has reported an increase in registered artists and economic input from 2010 to 2011 which demonstrate the strength of the festival. With unique marketing strategies and community involvement, I feel the Fringe is will achieve their goals to become ‘an outstanding, sustainable business’ (www.adelaidefringe.com.au).

Word Count: 2,398
References

Talk Fringe: How do we get non fringe people to the fringe? http://www.talkfringe.com/?p=2295 (viewed 13th June 2011)

Adelaide Fringe http://www.adelaide fringe.com.au (viewed 13th June 2011)

Peter Lehmann Wines http://www.peterlehmannwines.com/news-events/coming-events/adelaide-fringe-2010 (viewed 18th June 2011)

Getz, D 2002, “Why Festivals Fail”, Event Management, Vol. 7, pp. 209-219.

Kotler, P, Bowen, J, and Makens, J (1999) Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism 2nd Edition. Prentice Hall Inc, Upper Saddle River, NJ (pg 475)

Watts, R (2011) Adelaide Fringe: The biggest variety show ever. Artshub: online. http://www.artshub.com.au/au/news-article/opinions/arts/adelaide-fringe-the-biggest-variety-show-ever-183236 (viewed 18th June 2011)

Dimmock, K (2001) Festival and events: Celebrating special interest tourism in Douglas, N Special interest tourism: context and cases. Milton QLD ch15 pg 355-379.

Keller, C (2011) Students Rate the Fringe. Adelaidenow: online http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/in-depth/students-rate-the-fringe/story-e6frebvu-1226017524293 (viewed 21st June 2011)

Getz, D. 2009, Policy for sustainable and responsible festivals and events: institutionalization of a new paradigm, Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure & Events, Vol 1 Issue 1.

Derrett, Ros. Festivals and regional destinations: how festivals demonstrate a sense of community and place. [online]. Rural Society, v.13, no.1, 2003: 35-53. Availability: ISSN: 1037-1656. [cited 04 May 11].

Salem, E, Jones, E, and Morgan, N 2004. An Overview of Events Management in Yeoman, I, Robertson, M, Ali-Knight, J, Drummond, S, McMahon-Beattie, U (eds) Festival and Events Management, an international arts and cultural perspective. Elsevier Ltd, Oxford ch2 pp26-27