Highway to Dell

On the festival circuit

Visitors to parks and beaches across the US have found themselves collectively staring at 15,000 giant towels. However, this wasn’t early-morning tourists stealing the best spot; this was a marketing effort from Dell to promote its Summer Rocks Sweepstakes. The sweepstakes will offer up 10 pairs of tickets to the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Dell’s hometown – one of six music festivals that make up part of the Dell Summer Rocks Tour.

The company will bring the Dell Dome to Bumpershoot, Monolith, Outside Lands festival, Lollpalooza, Austin City Limits, and the Virgin Mobile Festival. “The Dell Dome is a multimedia playground that celebrates self-expression and promotes sharing through art, music and design,” said Lisa Hassel, Experiential Marketing Manager for Dell. Artist Mike Ming will customise each dome, a hair salon will offer ‘rock star hairdos’, and there will be opportunities to create custom mixtapes inside.

So what?: Dell is making a concerted effort to find a solid footing in music. The company recently announced its intent to enter the portable music player market again in September (after its prior attempt with the DJ Ditty player). The Dell Dome is similar to other brand initiatives, such as Beck’s Fusion Project, which seek to harness the collaborative might of music and art. Dell is also offering up 
The Sound & The Jury, an online battle of the bands concert. It may all be fairly standard music marketing fayre, but the key thing here is that it is doing something that its key competitor, Hewlett Packard, currently isn’t. Music, remember, is what set Apple and Microsoft apart.

“Reaching out to the creative community in this way is smart, those towels look cool on the beach, and the dome does seem like it may actually add value to a festival experience. It would perhaps have been better to focus the purpose of the dome, though; with everything from haircuts to mixtapes, the message seems a little muddled. And seeing as bathing is usually the last thing on people’s mind at festivals, the link between this stunt and the festival presence is somewhat tenuous.”
Ant Swede, Creative Planner, FRUKT

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