Breaking boundaries: European poetry festivals and their audiences

Literary and poetry festivals, known as late-comers in the festival industry, have encountered rapid developments in the last few years. They have grown from original poet readings to events full of varied activities. With the development of poetry festivals, audience and poets have been given an opportunity to have a different literary experience, to meet, discuss and actively participate in the literary scene. This thesis focuses on European poetry festivals and their marketing strategies, on how they attract and reach both local and international audiences. Employing a qualitative approach this thesis identifies trends in program and promotion of poetry festivals, concentrating on two controllable variables of marketing mix. Since festivals in general have been seen as prime phenomenon of experience economy, the study also discusses poetry festivals within the context of this theory which suggests that festival organizers should implement the four realms of experience economy while staging experiences, so that attendees will remember the experience and return to it. By conducting semi-structured interviews with managers, artistic directors and marketers of five European poetry festivals in-depth information about real-life practices in programming and promotion of poetry festivals has been gathered. This primary qualitative analysis was extended to include the statistical technique of correspondence analysis, which enabled the visual representation of data and the identification of key patterns and trends. This innovative methodological approach provided researcher with a deeper understanding of the research topic, illuminating relationships between categories that could not have be seen with the qualitative analysis alone. The main findings of this thesis show that poetry festivals give a priority to their program and put less focus on promotion. They all share a common objective of reaching wider audiences, which is implemented both in their program, by involving several complementary activities to traditional poetry readings, and in their promotion, which is targeted to a wider audience. There are two trends concerning the program of poetry festivals, one focuses on providing the program to the traditional literary audience, and the second, where the program is more focused on attracting new audiences, whose main interest is not poetry but complementary activities, such as other art forms. There are also two trends in promotion of poetry festivals. The first one is focused on the traditional promotional mix, while the second is focused more on the co-creation process and implementation of experiential marketing. In this trend, promotion is not something above the festival, but it is integrated in the festival.