Why Fests are Organized - The Financial Aspect

The Delhi University fest season is something that most of us look forward to throughout the year. Gone are those days when college life was only about academics and students focused on attending lectures and writing exams. In recent times, to engage students and prepare them for the real world, college and universities organize college fests and encourage students to participate and showcase their latent talent. Students put in their best efforts to make the fests entertaining and exciting.

From the vast array of cultural competitions to extravagant star nights, exuberantly lively events, boisterous crowd and lively celeb performances, different people look out for fests for different reasons.

Organizing a college fest is a noteworthy accomplishment. To be fruitful, it needs to draw in the student crowd from different colleges in huge numbers. Even though it appears fun, arranging a college fest requires a great deal of planning. It takes a lot of time, effort and money to organize a college fest. From just a few thousands of rupees a decade ago, the budgets for college fests, especially those of top-notch colleges, have begun to touch the crore mark. Gone are those days when a college fest meant merely bringing together competitive spirits who fought for their respective educational institutions' honour and pride. Today, it is all about the brand image that a fest helps the college generate. It's all about organizing concerts, inviting celebrities, giving away lucrative prizes, holding workshops under guidance from top subject experts, and installing expensive lighting and sound systems. The most significant source of money comes from the sponsors. That is why it is essential to get good sponsors. While it is easy enough for some colleges to attract sponsors, it becomes difficult for many others. While some college authorities agree to share a part of the fest's total cost, a few colleges do not provide any monetary support. For the organizers, sponsors are the saving grace. Although, netting the perfect sponsor is a taxing ordeal.

Putting together a college fest isn't an easy task. Core committees at different institutes work for months together, planning together with the different facets of these programmes and ensuring that they are flawlessly executed. The creative teams are responsible for the decor. Sponsorship teams look after funds. PR teams focus on promotions, whereas the college union, Principal and conveners are responsible for more significant decisions. Various heads and subheads are appointed to ease this process.

They generally begin by figuring out the event's financial angle, identifying and convincing sponsors before getting started on the specific events. They have to ensure that word is spread about their fest. It draws enough participation from the other colleges in the City. Besides this, every fest requires a few celebrities to judge the widespread competitions, no matter how small-scale the fest is. It is no surprise that organizing an event of this scale isn't cheap. Students generally approach large corporates for huge amounts of sponsorship. Despite this, there are many small expenses that the organizing team has to meet themselves.

When competing with fests like CROSSROADS and MECCA, the real fight is won when one gets the best sponsors. After frantically searching for 'personal contacts' and days of endless monotonous 'cold calling', one gets that big important meeting. For the fests to be successful, if one gets good sponsors for the event, the event's grandeur will also automatically get enhanced as one can afford to bring in not just commodities but even luxuries for the fest to be successful. This capital grandeur is directly proportional to the profits earned from the event. Thus, it becomes crucial to find nifty event sponsorships. Sponsorships can act as a great marketing tool for the event. It doesn't just become cost-efficient, but it can increase the success rates of the event exponentially. Publicizing the fest is a definite way of bringing in more people to your event. But random publicity is not going to be any good. One needs to reach out to a specific audience group to find potential event attendees. Ideally, the sponsors of the event belong to the same industry as the event. Therefore, the target audience for your event as well as your sponsor company is the same. So if you use the clientele of this sponsoring company to promote your event, you are approaching a very targeted audience that can add up to the list of potential attendees, which can be done by putting up blog posts on the sponsor company's blog regarding the event.

While looking for sponsorships, we often outlook the advantages and the benefits that the corporates and the universities get, including the reasons they are keen on organizing college fests. It is because of the deliverables offered by colleges that help them promote their businesses to the young, college-going crowd. It involves branding across college campuses: hoardings, banners, pamphlet distributions etc., promotion of new services during the fest: stage announcements, individual kiosks, exclusive area for conducting sales, coming up with various Internship programmes for students interested in gaining corporate experience, selecting Campus ambassadors to promote and engage other students in the firm's business for a specified time. The organizing committees also need to include their PR agencies to create the right amount of buzz for the event, effectively promote it by encouraging the media to cover/ attend the event, create excitement by generating awareness, help in getting sponsors for the event and gauge traditional as well as online glare to ensure that the event gets the desired mileage.

-- Puneet Kathuria