We recently had a (virtual) sit-down with Josh Roberts, Festival & Events Director at the Wellbeing Festival (rebranded from Mind Body Spirit Festival).  He talked us through their rebrand, continued growth, the key to staying calm onsite and Facebook’s love of cat pictures…

How big is the London Wellbeing Festival?

In 2014 the London Wellbeing Festival was attended by just over 20,000 people, with an increased footfall of over 20% from the previous year.

Where did the idea of Mind Body Spirit Festival first come from?

The Mind Body Spirit Festival was founded back in 1977 as the world’s first festival of its kind. The intention was to provide likeminded individuals the opportunity to meet and take part in one huge event, whether it be as a customer, an exhibitor or international performer.

In 2014 we moved the branding of the festival to Wellbeing, to accentuate the lifestyle elements of our show to that ever-growing market.

What were the biggest obstacles you faced during the planning, and what have you learned from organising this event?

There are so many different elements when planning a show like this, we have 48 hours to build the show, over 100 performers and artists to coordinate and over 150 exhibitors to manage. On top of that this year we switched to paperless ticketing, with Eventbrite, so our biggest obstacle is time.

The more and more events that I do, I continue to learn how important it is to get started as soon as possible, because something always crops up last minute!

One of the questions we get at Eventbrite the most is how to promote your event and reach a bigger audience. How did you find your community? Any tips you’d suggest for reaching a bigger audience?

We are lucky that we have such a history and strong following. Our internal database reaches over 75,000 people and our social media following is just over 25,000 so we have great links with our community already.

That being said, we always want to reach a bigger audience.

This year, as a way of increasing our Wellbeing audience we used strategic partnerships to bring our message to a larger audience, bringing in Psychologies Magazine and Time Out Magazine as sponsors and media partners really helped.

We continued this on a smaller scale by adapting marketing material for different audiences, one design does not fit all. We pushed different parts of our festival to different audiences, for example a focus on yoga, fitness and healthy eating was the theme for advertising in Gyms and Health Spas.

Social Media! Everyone loves social media, especially marketing agencies.  Personally I am not sold on Facebook being the answer to selling out your events or even selling your products. Saying that, it is important to maintain a conversation with your audience and this is where Facebook does help strengthen your audience.

I would always have a social media presence but again, it’s a ‘one design does not fit all’ scenario.  For example I personally ignore all event invites on Facebook, as I went to Uni and was swamped by SU invites every day.  However Social Media works great with some of our audience as their demographic are newer to the platform so their engagement is a lot higher.

In basic terms, any promotion you do has to have a purpose, because promotion without purpose will just get lost and have no impact… unless it’s a picture of a cat, Facebook loves that shit.

What’s the one tool you can’t live without?

Easy…Eventbrite.

How do you keep your head during your event? Any tips for a first time organiser on how to stay sane?

Plan, plan and plan a little bit more. The more time you put into build-up and laying the ground work the easier your life will be.  That doesn’t mean that you will be able to kick back and relax at the event, you will still be rushed off your feet non-stop with live situations, but the more you plan the less serious those live situations are and you will always have a response or a plan.

Secondly trust yourself, you are always going to have doubt when responsible for any size of event, but trust your instinct and 99% of the time it all works out.

What was your favourite moment from this year’s event?

There were a few. Opening doors in the morning at Earls Court and seeing the queues of people wanting to be part of the show, also the fact that this year was the best show (attendance wise) in the Festival’s history.

For me personally knowing that all the changes I had implemented worked and more importantly improved the show, and then sitting at my desk the day after the show writing a list of things to improve for next year.

Where can visitors go to learn more about your next event?

Visitors can look out for announcements of next year’s festival, which will be at Olympia 1-4 May 2015, on our website mindbodyspirit.co.uk and on our Facebook page facebook.com/mindbodyspiritfestival.

Tickets are also on sale now.