Connect with the millennial music tribe: Sunburn Music Festival

Sunburn Music Festival is South Asia's biggest EDM extravaganza which has positioned India as a prime music festival destination globally, says Sumit Walia, Vice President - product and marketing, OPPO India which is the title sponsor this year; the festival is scheduled for December 27.

He says that the smartphone brand wishes to leverage the avid appetite for music consumption and interaction of the millennials and finds Sunburn as the right property to connect with the audience.

Excerpts from an interview:

Being associated with Sunburn Music Festival, how do you think it will help you as a brand?

As a young and global smartphone brand, we thrive on connecting with the millennials and Gen Z not only through cutting-edge products but also by associating with the right mix of platforms. Keeping consumers at the core of our strategy, we have been on a constant lookout for associating with right properties that not only inspires our young audience but also fuel their passion. Music is one of the key passion points for today's millennial and our association with the Sunburn Music Festival demonstrates our relentless commitment to strike a chord with our young audience globally.

How did the association happen?

Sunburn Music Festival is South Asia's biggest EDM extravaganza, which has positioned India as a prime music festival destination globally. Our association with Sunburn offers us a platform to reach out to our audience and connect with them through the power of music at a global level. Through a culture of discovery, engagement, and sharing, millennials have demonstrated an avid appetite for music consumption and interaction. We wish to leverage this and therefore, we identified Sunburn as the right property to connect with our audience.

What do you look forward to with the event this year?

The millennial music tribe tends to build passionate communities around music and artistes they love. We look forward to being a part of this community and engage with them. Our association with Sunburn is not just limited to the music festival but extends to the first of its kind OPPOxSunburn Campus DJ Hunt competition. With this competition, we are extending a global platform for one talented winner to share the stage with renowned international artistes like Martin Garrix, Chainsmokers, DJ Snake and perform live at OPPO Sunburn Festival 2019.

As a consumer-focused brand, we aim to engage with this young tribe not only through cutting-edge technology but also through premium experiences that inspire them to showcase their talent at a global level.

How important it is for a brand to collaborate with something like Sunburn?

I believe that live music experiences forge lasting bonds and help connect with people in an amazing way. It also gives the millennials an opportunity to have a tangible interaction with their favourite artistes. This together makes it a relevant and important choice for us to collaborate with a property like Sunburn and provide our audience with a premium experience.

What are the other music properties you have associated with and what's the marketing strategy behind it?

Consumers are at the heart of our marketing strategy. To ensure this, we take a 360-degree approach across platforms to touch base with our users and create the necessary brand connect. Having said that, we closely looked at the Indian consumer behaviour and understood that millennials consume a lot of content on their phone. They want the convenience of content to be available on their smartphones and music happens to be one zone that resonates with them as it's a big passion point for today's millennial. On these lines, we collaborated with YouTube to bring a digital music concert in the form of Straight up Punjab for our global audience. The concert enabled them to enjoy live performances of some of the biggest names in Punjabi music from the comfort of their home.