As I jammed out all weekend long to the tunes of some of my favorite bands, the world outside the gates of Austin City Limits slipped away. I forgot about writing papers and reading articles. I forgot about air conditioning and breathing clean air. I even forgot that not all tacos cost five dollars.
The first band I saw on the big stage was “Vampire Weekend.” I had never heard any of their music but it only took one song before I warmed up and began to dance along with the crowd. They are a youthful band that has a beautiful happy-go-lucky sound to it. However, it struck me as particularly odd to look to stage left and see a woman signing along with band. I turned to my father and shouted above all the noise “Why would a person who is deaf want to come to a music festival?” He replied to me, his foolish and naïve daughter, while still bouncing to the beat, “What’s not to love?”
That is when I realized that I go to ACL for far more than the music. I go to ACL to see 65,000 people come together and enjoy something awesome. I love seeing a six year old girl get in line behind the seventy year old man that is standing behind me as we all wait in line to get our airbrush tattoos. I love seeing what people wear or what people dare not to wear. And the sights cover all of Zilker Park. A park that I was playing volleyball in last month and will be viewing Christmas lights in next season, has, for the moment, been completely transformed.
I love the feel of heat, both from the sun and the other bodies that you are crammed up against. I love the feel of the amplifiers. It is like they are shaking my soul one drum beat at a time. I love when I have no idea how I am still standing because my legs feel like it would be better if they were just cut off.
I love the smell that is left on you when you leave and that you can only really smell when you get home. If live music had a perfume, it would smell like that: a mixture of beer and sweat and pot.
It is the music that brings us to Austin City Limits for the first time, but I think it is the experience that keeps us coming back. There are almost no lines and check-in is flawless. Safety is above all else, as security guards will immediately assist anyone who is publically intoxicated out of the park. Furthermore, there is a tag-your-kid booth to keep children and parents together. Free t-shirts are distributed to anyone that can collect a trash bag full of recyclable beer cans and water bottles; therefore, guests are actually doing the festival clean-up while they help the environment. The shuttle system has been perfected. It seems like the people at C3 have thought of everything, so I’d be interested to see what people at the festival wrote in the “Austin City Listens” suggestion boxes.
I’m also interested to further explore the customer experience at ACL. Only in its sixth year of existence, ACL has already drawn in thousands of customers that pay hundreds of dollars for one ticket. They pay to see, sit, smell, feel, and sometimes even listen to one unforgettable weekend.
I plan to use articles and reviews from past festivals, a novel written about the festival, and talk to customers themselves about their concert experiences. I’m interested to see how this festival compares with others, and I’d like to hear some of the negative feedback for the festival. I’d also like to research more about the behind the scenes operations and what it takes to put on an event that is this huge.
One article I have found was written after the 2004 ACL festival. It is from the Austin American Statesman: http://www.austin360.com/xl/content/xl/acl2004/aclhistory.html
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Andie - this is really interesting and I think it will be a fun topic for you. You may want to also look at information on other festivals to see if they have similarities or if there is something really special about ACL (you may have mentioned that in your blog, but that thought occurred to me as I was reading your approach). You can also structure it in a way that ends in lessons learned about ACL that should be applied to other festivals and/or to other types of customer experiences in industries outside of music & music festivals. Let me know if you want to talk more.
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