FKP Scorpio UK announces raft of hires, partnership
European touring giant FKP Scorpio is expanding its recently formed British operation with a slate of new appointments, as well as a brand new partnership.
Julie Morgan has been appointed as head of marketing for UK & European touring.
Previously head of marketing and PR at SJM Concerts, where she worked for over 16 years, Morgan has worked on campaigns for artists including The Stone Roses, Take That, Arctic Monkeys, Foo Fighters, Adele, The Killers, The Spice Girls, Little Mix and Prince, as well as festivals including the Country2Country brand and Wild Life in Brighton.
In addition, Lou Champion joins as head of ticketing. Champion has previously held roles at Live Nation, Warner Music, Kilimanjaro Live, and London Olympics 2012, and was also a keynote speaker at the 2020 ILMC Futures Forum discussing The Ticket of The Future.
Rebecca Nichols also joins FKP Scorpio UK as head of live co-ordination after a decade working as an agent at CAA. At her former agency, she oversaw all areas of artists’ live touring careers, including booking headline tours and festivals around the world, associated brand partnerships and live streaming productions.
“We feel like we have assembled a dream team of the best talents our industry has to offer”
Daniel Ealam and Scott O’Neill, MDs of live at FKP Scorpio UK, added: “We feel like we have assembled a dream team of the best talents our industry has to offer, and we very much look forward to driving the UK business with a group of like-minded music fans”.
Ealam and O’Neill joined the company in September 2020, alongside co-MDs of special projects Barry Campbell and James Cassidy and CEO Folkert Koopmans.
Koopmans says: “I am really happy that we can welcome Julie, Lou and Rebecca to our FKP Scorpio family and also our partnership with Sam. We all share the same values and have the same vision for FKP Scorpio UK. We will use our experiences, contacts and networks to be the best partners for our artists in the UK and Europe.”
FKP Scorpio UK has also partnered with London-based promoter Sam Laurence, whom Ealam and O’Neill hail as “one of the most exciting promoters in the game right now”.
Under the Dollop brand, Sam counts Jamie xx, Joji, Kelela, M Huncho, Moderat, 100 Gecs, Greentea Peng, Dorian Electra, Berwyn, Erika de Casier, Koreless and Smerz among his clients.
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Frukt unveils Field Work 2016 festival branding guide
Creative agency Frukt last night unveiled the sixth edition of Field Work – “the definitive global guide to brand activations at music festivals” – at a launch event at the Gibson Brands Studio in central London.
This year’s guide (pictured) focuses on ‘the new transparency’ (subtitled “embracing the ‘third wave’ of branded festival activations”), arguing that brands who advertise at music festivals should now be doing so in a more transparent way than ever before. It divides festival branding into three distinct ages: The silent generation, characterised by “loud, brash banner sponsorship, shouted from the sidelines but ultimately falling on deaf ears”; the covert generation, which is “party first, brand second experiential marketing, leveraging entertainment as a ‘right to play'”; and the current, transparent generation, featuring “a candid and open approach, not being afraid to put the brand and its story above the entertainment parapet”.
Featured case studies include Guitar Hero Live’s The Amp at V Festival, Reading Festival and Bestival, in which festivalgoers were invited to play the game months ahead of its official release date in front of an amp the size of a house (Field Work says the ‘activation’ “put the game firmly back on the map, announcing its presence loud and clear”); Energizer’s Dress Your Head Up initiative at Bestival, which invited attendees to decorate a free headtorch with a range of “colourful and charming” accessories; Telstra’s The Big Selfie Stick from Splendour in the Grass, which capitalised on a site-wide ban on selfie sticks with its own 10m-high version, a “smart hybrid of both the ‘photo bomb’ and ‘size matters’ trends” that “provide[d] the brand with a much-needed subversive edge”; and Virgin Trains’ Festival Express to Festival №6 and Kendal Calling, which “remove[d] the drudgery often associated with festival travel” by serving up live music, cocktails, magicians and “glitter-paint makeovers” to festivalgoers en route.
The full Field Work 2016 guide can be downloaded at the Frukt website.