
The Leaked Fyre Festival Pitch Deck Is Beyond Parody - taylorbuley
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/fyre-festival-pitch-deck
======
walrus01
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.

~~~
austenallred
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...](https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-
arnell-021109.pdf).

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.

~~~
acconrad
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.

~~~
randomacct44
Apparently it's real!

[http://www.newsweek.com/crazy-genius-brand-guru-peter-
arnell...](http://www.newsweek.com/crazy-genius-brand-guru-peter-arnell-76137)

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

~~~
badosu
_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..

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

Well, mission accomplished I suppose.

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

~~~
easilyBored
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...](http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.3122436.1493647015!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_1200/spl1487746-001.jpg)

;)

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

~~~
BWStearns
German probably has one.

~~~
wordupmaking
Werbungsleereschmierigkeitsgefühl, maybe.

~~~
amichal
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

~~~
lawless123
That's so Werbungsleereschmierigkeitsgefühl

------
mfrye0
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.

~~~
mdekkers
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.

~~~
mfrye0
Definitely. To get anywhere near profitable you need to have the right people
and to be in it for the long haul.

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

...oh

~~~
walrus01
[https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-
arnell...](https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-
arnell-021109.pdf)

~~~
CamperBob2
I don't know whether to be happy or sad that Umberto Eco didn't live to see
that.

~~~
walrus01
I would like to see a deep analysis of it written by the Timecube guy.

------
puranjay
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.

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

~~~
dreamcompiler
Yeah, these bozos make telephone sanitizers look downright useful.

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

~~~
jl6
Is it irony that in our current age of handled-daily-but-never-washed
smartphones, telephone sanitizer could actually be a useful job?

------
Mendenhall
"The cultural experience of the decade"

I mean they may have got that part right.

~~~
anigbrowl
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.

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

~~~
mfrye0
I'm curious about that too. They must have gotten close or raised all of it,
as they actually attempted to have the event.

~~~
notahacker
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?

------
notahacker
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

------
nharada
"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.

~~~
puranjay
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

------
nikanj
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...](http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/04/fyre-festival-exumas-bahamas-
disaster.html) 2)
[https://twitter.com/Ruleyork/status/858025172942675968](https://twitter.com/Ruleyork/status/858025172942675968)

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

~~~
nradov
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.

------
bleair
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.

------
michaelchisari
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?

~~~
mirimir
> 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 :)

------
nwrk
Reality Fyre fueled twitter photos

[http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/04/sad-and-funny-tweets-
from...](http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/04/sad-and-funny-tweets-from-ja-
rules-failed-fyre-festival.html)

------
easilyBored
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.

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

~~~
dragonwriter
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.

------
a3n
The Lyre Festival.

~~~
dreamcompiler
Or Dire, as it were.

------
aaron695
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?

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

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

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

------
panic
Here's a direct link to the deck itself:
[https://www.scribd.com/document/346949516/Fyre-Festival-
Pitc...](https://www.scribd.com/document/346949516/Fyre-Festival-Pitch-Deck)

~~~
chii
Link is private

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

------
threeseed
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.

~~~
vectorpush
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.

~~~
will_brown
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.

~~~
vectorpush
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.

~~~
will_brown
> 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).

