Branding: Fyre Festival

Campaign: Fyre Festival II

Objective: Billy McFarland, the disgraced ringleader for Fyre Festival was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud related to the festival. He was released two years early in 2022 but still owes $26 million in restitution.

FROM THE WEBSITE: “Over the past two years, we’ve poured everything into bringing FYRE back with honesty, transparency, relentless effort, and creativity. We’ve taken the long road to rebuilding trust. We rebuilt momentum. And we proved one thing without a doubt:

FYRE is one of the most powerful attention engines in the world.

 Since 2017, FYRE has dominated headlines, documentaries, and conversations as one of the world’s most talked-about music festivals. We knew that FYRE was big, but we didn’t realize just how massive the wave would become. That wave has brought us here: to a point where we know it’s time to call for assistance.

 This brand is bigger than any one person and bigger than what I’m able to lead on my own. It’s a movement. And it deserves a team with the scale, experience, and infrastructure to realize its potential.

 We have decided the best way to accomplish our goals is to sell the FYRE Festival brand, including its trademarks, IP, digital assets, media reach, and cultural capital—to an operator that can fully realize its vision.

 There is a clear path for operators and entrepreneurs with strong domain expertise to build FYRE into a global force in entertainment, media, fashion, CPG, and more.”

Why it DOESN’T work: 

1. The Fyre Festival name is toxic no matter how you slice it or what kind of spin you put on it. No one trusts Billy McFarland or his endeavors.

2. When a brand is this poisonous, don’t re-create it. And by all means, never try and wipe the slate clean, some things need to be killed with fire and buried under a salted mine.