The world’s coolest music festival!

What is the world’s coolest music festival? Is it Roskilde, Glastonbury or maybe Lollapalooza? This is a question me and my friend asked ourselves after attending the music festival “The Camel” which is held every July in Myvatn, 6 hours drive from Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. But what makes a cool festival, is it the bands, the venue or maybe the attendees?

We Icelanders believe that we are best at everything. Our products are the best, our country is the greatest, our music excels any others and nothing compares to our great Viking sagas. The same went for our way to do business, which ultimately led to the collapse of all of our banks. A bad way of putting it would be saying that we are arrogant bastards. On my way to “the Camel” I met a girl from Australia, she had been here maybe a week, and she kindly pointed out to us, that we claim to have a lot of things that are “The best in the world”.

The most famous Icelandic festival is without a doubt Iceland airwaves, which is held in downtown Reykjavik on many venues. Icelandair sells packages on its website where they quote David Fricke of the Rolling Stone who claims it is “the hippest long weekend on the annual music festival calendar”. Thank you David, you proved my point, the coolest festival is held in Iceland.  It focuses on Icelandic bands, but it always features semi famous bands like Vampire weekend, Sparta, Flaming lips etc. A full access to the festival costs around $65 which is a lot and since it is held on venues, you will probably spend at least another $65 on alcoholic beverages. Bear in mind that a pint of beer costs $7 and a 2x gin and tonic costs $10.

The Camel featured only Icelandic bands. And most of them will play on Iceland airwaves. There was no admission and only one stage which was in a barn that could fit 400 people. The venue was decorated with candles on the wall, trees hanging from the ceiling and Christmas lights above the stage, so at first I thought I was entering a techno club for Elves. There, I met Ozzy Osbourne and a sheep called Angus that was running around all over the place!

In short, the atmosphere was electric. When Angus, Ozzy and myself come together what can go wrong? Everyone agreed that this was one of the best and weirdest music festivals they had been to. After the concert, I and the rest of the elves went to the woods where we sat by a campfire, watched the morning sun and enjoyed one of the most memorable weekends of the summer.

So what does this have to do with branding? Well, “Camel” is a 2 year old nonprofit festival that is mostly advertised by word of mouth. So this festival has everything to do with branding, it proves that if you are passionate about your idea and if you execute it correctly, your brand will be successful.

I think it is fitting to end this with a quote from my good pal Rihanna “Please don’t stop the music”