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Pineapple Agency struggles to hang on after events disappear

For a company that’s earned its money and reputation producing experiential marketing events and festivals, the pandemic delivered a crushing blow. 

Denver-based Pineapple Agency founder and CEO Justin Moss said the company had $2 million worth of revenue booked with contracts for 2020 events. And almost in a blink it was all gone.

“Our industry completely crumbled and was destroyed in 10 months,” said Moss. “It was the first to close, and it’s going to be the last to open.”

Pineapple helped produce on average six large festivals annual, most EDM (electronic dance music) like the Electric Daisy Carnival, an event that was projected draw 450,000 over three days in Las Vegas. It consulted on many others.

“We had a record 2019, and a record first quarter 2020, and it all dies,” he said. “We used to employ hundreds of contractors.”

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Pollstar, a live music trade publication, estimated in a 2020 year-end report the industry lost more than $30 billion. Instead of having what was estimated to be $12 billion revenue year, it lost $9.7 billion directly and another $8 billion in economic impact to restaurants, merchandise sellers, concessions, etc.

Moss had to lay off half his staff of 10, reduce his salary to “almost nothing” and incur debt the company’s never experienced.

“Groups like mine, small boutiques, are dying. We’re not like a Live Nation or an AEG,” he said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. We were lucky to have that record-breaking Q1, so I could keep most of my employees working.”

Started in high school

 

Moss said he started producing, and promoting, underground concerts in high school.

“I kind of got ahead of the curve with these multi-day festivals,” he said.

At 21 years old, he helped produce the Beyond Music and Extreme Sports Festival in 2007 with artists like Ludacris, Outkast, Stone Temple Pilots and extreme sport stars like skater Tony Hawk. The next year, Google hired him to work on an “experiential campaign” for the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

He explains the “experiential” marketing as “cutting through the clutter of traditional marketing to create a live experience.”

“You keep people engaged in that brand, and get them emotionally connected to the brand,” Moss said.

A more recent example came in 2019 when Bud Light hired Pineapple to help promote its Post Malone branded cans. Pineapple created an easily set-up, and collapsible, photo wall of the special edition cans for fans to take selfies in front of for Malone’s Runaway Tour.

He chose the pineapple as the company logo and name because it’s the “international sign of hospitality.”

“Not like a caterer or hotel, but with a real side of fun and quirkiness,” he said. “I found a pineapple to be like your crazy, weird friend. Delicious on the inside, but crazy on the outside.”

Going virtual?

 

Moss worries “we’re all becoming robots stuck in our houses,” and knows that human interaction is a lot more than seeing faces on a screen.

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“Humans need events and personal interactions,” he said. “Especially coming out of a pandemic.”

That’s why Pineapple is not pivoting to 100 percent virtual/digital. But it’s done what it can to survive.

An example of Moss’ hybrid approach to live/virtual events is when Pineapple sent the makings of a fine dinner to a company’s employees, then had them cook the meal with a chef on video call.

Over the holidays, Moss worked with businesses to treat their employees with a “premium box” or “comfort box” filled with things like fine liquors. They put a Family Feud game in each and the employees played on a video conference call.

“While it was fun and great to see people engaged, and I loved seeing the smiles on those faces, that work is not going to pay the electric bill,” he said.

The live events and festivals will.

“I know the industry will be back and come back with a vengeance,” he said. “Live Nation released some research a few months ago showing 80 percent of ticket holders didn’t want refunds.”

But the frustration is evident in his voice when he talked about which businesses were deemed essential, the bickering among politicians in Washington over more pandemic relief efforts, and the slow and often confused pace of the vaccine rollout.

Moss, like so many others, yearns to be out.

“It’s gone on way too long, with way too many business closings and bankruptcy filings. We need to move on,” he said. “Look at the economic impact to hotels, restaurants, cooks, cleaners – all those employees. How can that not be essential? I mean boyfriends meet their girlfriends at events. Who really wants to sit on a computer and watch it all day – we did it because we had to.”

ABOUT THE SERIES

With its “Lives Lost” series, The Gazette is remembering those whose lives were cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. But the impact of the pandemic is felt in other ways, too. With “Lives Left Behind,” The Gazette is profiling those who have lost not their lives but their livelihoods, who have been forced to put their dreams on hold or struggled to keep their businesses afloat as the coronavirus keeps its grip on the world. Send story ideas to dennis.huspeni@gazette.com.

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