Branding Strategy: Folklorama

Company Brand:

Folklorama brands themselves as “experiencing the beautiful cultures that make up the fabrics of Winnipeg” and “helping preserve cultures for years to come”. Folklorama is the largest festival of its kind in the world[1]. Folklorama prides itself on celebrating and embracing other cultures, which is why they attract such a diverse audience.

Folklorama’s brand portrays the image of inclusivity among the community and the celebration of diversity. This brand image is important to the consumers of Winnipeg since Canada’s census stated that “Winnipeg is an extremely diverse city, with a huge number of ethnic and cultural groups living there”.

SWOT Analysis:

Strengths-

Folklorama is the largest and longest running multicultural festival in the world. Having the title and running for 51 years and counting, competitors don’t compare. Every year they attract more and more people due to its popularity in diversity.

During the Covid19 pandemic, Folklorama had a minor setback in having to cut down on costs but instead of giving up they reimagined themselves into the new norm. One of their greatest strengths is the ability to adapt to different situations thrown their way, whether it be date changes because of other local festivities, issues with pavilions or a global pandemic. They came up with a new campaign since the festival would be canceled to do folklorama at home, folklorama at school and folklorama at work. With the new and improved Folklorama, people were still able to book performers and other talents to watch at home or at work/school events online. They’ve always found a way to maintain relevance throughout the pandemic and keep people engaged online through social media..

Within the world, there is often talks of discrimination, racism and overall negativity towards others but with Folklorama existing it helps combat the negativity. Folklorama is a company of unity with one another and celebrates cultural differences. There will always be discrimination and racism in the world, but Folklorama’s strength is to teach the world about different cultures by many different means like dance performances, different foods and learning the history of other nations. This helps to show the world it is okay to be different and should be celebrated and day to day you help someone broaden their opinions and perspectives.

Weaknesses-

Like many companies, Folklorama does have flaws, flaws that are often fixed throughout time. A weakness for Folklorama would be the inability to organize every pavilion the same due to there being so many. As the actual Folklorama festival is home to so many pavilions it is difficult to have the same things at every building and every building differs in size. For example, some pavilions may have 2X less seating available than others or some might have AC, and some don’t. This is difficult for the Folklorama company to navigate, again due to their being so many pavilions but where their weakness lies is the fact that each pavilion has to do it on their own.

Another weakness Folklorama has is being too separated from its pavilions. Since each pavilion does mostly everything on their own, not everyone has the same opportunities. As it’s a volunteer event every pavilion has different skill sets, for example, some pavilions do not have volunteers that are internet savvy which removes them from so many more opportunities that other pavilions may have. Folklorama only interacting with certain pavilions online perpetuates the idea that they are the “better” pavilions to the public. In conclusion, Folkloramas weakness is the inability to properly organize pavilion promotion equally or being unable to help more with those unable. In Folklorama’s defense, they do have some workshops available for those to learn but these workshops are very short and not very in depth.

As mentioned above, Folklorama did really well in maintaining relevancy within the Covid19 pandemic with many online options for all. Though Folklorama had a great intention and tried really hard it was still a weakness in the end as most people were not interested atleast at the beginning stages of the pandemic. They lost a lot of people throughout time and were often seen like they were trying to survive. In the end they are bettering back to normal as time has gone on but Covid19 was definitely a weakness for Folklorama throughout a period of time.

Opportunities-

Folklorama is known for celebrating diversity on behalf of the province which allows them to gather a diverse audience. Due to this the organization was able to attract an audience of 455,000 people in their 2019 event making it the largest audience in 10 years with visitors arriving from other provinces such as Alberta, B.C and Ontario with some even visitors travelling from abroad.

Folklorama’s diversity allows them to stay ahead of competitors for it allows visitors to experience so many different cultures in a short period of time, with visitors stating that they enjoy these festivals for they are able to be more exposed to the world without them having to leave Winnipeg while the members of the organization say that they are happy that they can celebrate their home country and their mother tongue.

Due to Covid, Folklorama had to cancel it’s 2020 event, but this did not stop the organization from having each pavilion form telling their stories which is why they created Folklorama Feed as a way that members of the organization to embrace their cultures, the feed has over 20 videos reach an audience of 20,000 people. A portion of the videos are dedicated to certain pavilions for instance there is a video called Folklorama Fusions: Europe, the video goes into detail about symbolic items in the culture such as a special shoe called Flamenco which is worn by Flamenco dancers, the dance itself is based on various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain. Other videos on the Feed celebrate other cultures and some going into detail about how the organization has helped them reconnect with their culture.

Threats-

The year 2020 was a difficult period for Folklorma and the tourism industry overall with Stat Canada announcing that 44% of businesses involved in the tourism sector had seen a 40% decline in revenue. Sadly due to Covid-19 and the travel restrictions Folklorama had to cancel its 2020 event which made many visitors and members of the organization dishearten, the cancellation has caused the organization to lose revenue for many of its programs such as their scholarships and charity organizations and potentially future visitors, Folklorama has announced that they are hosting their festival in 2022 but due to Covid, some may fear coming to the event which can result in fewer visitors compared to previous and revenue generated for the organization, so it will be exciting to see how Folklorama will improve itself to attract visitors.

Folklorama was created as a one-time event in 1970 to celebrate Manitoba's Centennial but the event was so successful that it continued each year, many festivals have emerged since or before then such festivals are the County Fest, Red River Exhibition, Jazz Festival or other cultural festivals. With these festivals hosting the same season as Folklorama it can be seen as a competitive threat that can impact Folklorama’s visitor's experience, the organization has to promote its event more with the fear that there may be fewer visitors due to their competitors and Covid-19. In order to connect and engage with their audience more Folklorama has become more present on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Instagram with them having over 12,000 followers on each platform with posts containing information about their upcoming event in 2022 or sharing stories of each pavilion.

Positioning Strategy:

An effective positioning strategy considers the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, the needs of the customers and market, and the position of competitors

One of the positioning strategies that Folklorama uses is positioning based on the product’s characteristics. The main product Folklorama wants to advertise is their multicultural event. They want to express all the different cultures in Winnipeg, showing that they are open to the different cultures in Winnipeg.

Another positioning strategy that Folklorama uses is positioning based on product use or application. Folklorama tries its best to express the different cultures here in Winnipeg and get the community involved in it. Folklorama wants to show that when people attend this event, they get to experience different cultures. Folklorama also has programs and workshops which allow people to get connected on a deeper level.

Another strategy that Folklorama uses is positioning based on quality. Folklorama uses its multicultural event to express quality, they offer the best quality in terms of showcasing the different cultures. Making sure that every culture is accepted and welcomed. They do their best to provide the best multicultural event that everyone would enjoy and really understand the different cultures in Winnipeg.

Since one of Folklorama´s most important strengths is being the largest and longest-running multicultural festival in the world. They also use a competitor-based positioning strategy. Competitor based positioning focuses on using the competition as a reference point for differentiation, so if a customer compares any other festival in Winnipeg city, for example County Fest, Red River Exhibition, Jazz Festival, Folklorama will be the largest.

Citations:

About Us. Folklorama. (2021, July 12). Retrieved September 28, 2021, from https://folklorama.ca/about-us/

Group of dancers in cultural attire. (n.d.). photograph.

Winnipeg population 2021. Canada Population. (n.d.). Retrieved September 28, 2021, from https://www.canadapopulation.net/winnipeg-population/.

Tam, S., Sood, S., & Johnston, C. (2021, June 8). Different industries have been impacted in various ways by the COVID-19 pandemic. the tourism sector was one of the hardest hit by travel restrictions. this paper presents a portrait of the pandemic's impact on the tourism sector and the expectations of these businesses moving forward. it involves an examination of the data produced by the Canadian Survey on business conditions. Impact of COVID-19 on the tourism sector, second quarter of 2021. Retrieved October 1, 2021, from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/45-28-0001/2021001/article/00023-eng.htm#:~:text=Almost%20half%20(44.9%25)%20of,see%20this%20level%20of%20loss.

Seiff, J. (2017, August 12). Opinion | opinion: Acknowledging diversity - warts and all | CBC news. CBCnews. Retrieved September 30, 2021, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/opinion-diversity-folklorama-warts-1.4242255.

Folklorama. (2020). Folklorama 2020 Annual Report. Folklorama. Retrieved September 30, 2021, from https://folklorama.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/folklorama-annual-report-2020-Final-SinglePages-HD-1.pdf.

YouTube. (2020). Folklorama Feed. YouTube. Retrieved September 30, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfX3W07x-X2fa5kNJYmgtTQ.

Harris , H. (2013). Folklorama. The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved September 30, 2021, from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/folklorama#:~:text=weeks%20since%201988.-,WINNIPEG's%20multicultural%20festival%20Folklorama%20was%20created%20as%20a%20one%2Dtime,to%202%20weeks%20since%201988.

Positioning: 5 strategies to stand out from your competitors | BYB Marketing Blog. (2020, August 3). Positioning: 5 Strategies to Stand out from Your Competitors | BYB Marketing Blog. https://brandyourselfbetter.com/blog/post/98450/positioning-5-strategies-to-stand-out-from-your-competitors

[1] Determined by the International Council of Organizations for Folklore Festivals and Folk Art.