When jam-rock giant Widespread Panic headlined Riverbend in 2014, festival officials said, the show set a record for single-night wristband sales and attracted attendees from as far away as Cincinnati and Dallas.
Getting fans to travel more than 750 miles is unusual for Riverbend, which concentrates the bulk of its promotional efforts outside Chattanooga within regional markets such as Knoxville, Nashville and Atlanta.
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These deals predominantly take the form of bartered trades, such as providing festival wristbands to radio stations to use in giveaways in exchange for airing Riverbend ads. However, the Widespread Panic show and the band's huge following made for a tempting exception, officials said.
Rather than rely on fans to become aware of the band's appearance at Riverbend through social media channels or the typical bartered regional promotions, Riverbend organizer Friends of the Festival took out paid ads in national publications, including the music magazine Relix that targets jam band fans, marketing director Amy Morrow said.
"That was something different," she said. "You sit around and talk about it and say, 'This is a publication where these folks will drive from Kalamazoo if they know Widespread Panic is going to be there.' And yes, it's worth the investment."
Organizers of Riverbend, unofficially known in some circles as "The Tennessee Valley's Family Reunion," say it's critical to the event's success to expand its reach outside the Chattanooga area. According to Morrow, 85 percent of the festival's attendees are not residents of Hamilton County.
While attendees predominantly live within the region, there have been rare exceptions in the event's 35-year history, Friends of the Festival communications director Barbara Agee said.
"My list of people from faraway lands includes Australia, Belgium, England and Ireland," Agee said. "Their biggest revelation is that they didn't think it was going to be so big and fun. After talking to them via email for months, it was exciting to finally meet all of them."
Before a festival can gain national or international recognition, however, its growth typically begins with winning over its hometown audience, said Steve Schmader, president and CEO of the International Festivals and Events Association, an organization that includes Friends of the Festival.
"When people come and are traveling and visiting from outside, they tend to like to go to things and places where the locals think it's pretty special," he said. "Usually, you start from that local basis, and then you're expanding into ever-increasing circles."
Once a festival achieves the kind of success that warrants expanding its reach, the process of out-of-market promotion becomes a balancing act between using traditional channels such as newspapers, radio and TV stations, and social media services, which are free and reach a different and typically younger demographic. Deciding where to focus promotional efforts is largely a question of an event's resources and who it's targeting, Schmader said.
"The hardest part today is that there are so many audiences you're trying to play to and so many generations," he said. "Somebody like Riverbend that has the heavy entertainment components, they can link into the sites of the bands and the performers and all those things, too. There are so many angles and things. It's such a spiderweb."
Since it started on the riverfront in 1982, Riverbend has become more than just a nine-day musical smorgasbord, with an estimated economic impact last year of more than $24 million, according to Friends of the Festival. The thousands of out-of-town guests who make the trip also reach broader conclusions about the city during their stay here, Morrow said.
"For 35 years, the festival has been showcasing Chattanooga as a cool place to live and work and raise kids," she said. "That's the goal, to showcase Chattanooga, to show what a special place this is to be."
This year's festival will serve as a showcase of the city to thousands of guests arriving from out of town, Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau CEO Bob Doak said. Despite being "mainly a festival for us as locals," Riverbend is one of the linchpins of the bureau's ongoing campaign to promote the city as a destination for musical tourism, he said.
"One of the great things that Riverbend does is to continue to reinforce the fact that we are a music town and continue to be a music town," Doak said. "Riverbend plays a vital role in creating the wonderful music scene that this city has and will continue to play an integral role [in that] going forward.
"When we promote music as a city, Riverbend certainly does a great job of representing us."
This year's Riverbend Festival starts today and continues through June 18.
Contact staff writer Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.