Back by popular demand: Public Mobile Fest, our music festival continues to travel the streets of TO

[Susana_G]

Hey Community,

We are excited to announce that  Public Mobile Fest, will continue to travel the streets of Toronto for 3 more days this Fall. We had a blast talking to so many Torontonians about Public Mobile and how we do wireless differently, all while hearing some amazing local talent.

For those who don’t know, Public Mobile Fest is a mobile festival which has been travelling across Toronto neighbourhoods and hosting pop-up performances.

Here’s the 411:

Where is the festival taking place?

At various locations around Toronto! See the schedule below for more details.

Date	Time	Location	Artists/Bands
Sat Oct 21	12:00-7:00pm	Distillery Historic District	MIRIAN ft. Noble Sobel (12:00 - 1:30 pm) Connor Morand (2:00 - 3:30pm) Jake Feeney (4:00-5:30pm) Connor Morand (6:00-7:00pm)
Sun Oct 22	12:00-5:30pm	Harbourfront Centre	LeBarons        (12:00 - 1:00 pm) Mermaids Exist (1:30 - 2:30pm) The Thick (3:00-4:00pm) Mark Brathwaite (4:30-5:30pm)
Sat Oct 28	12:00-3:00pm	Distillery Historic District	Stacey Renee(12:00 - 1:30 pm) MIRIAN ft. Noble Sobel (2:00 - 3:00pm)
	5:00pm-7:30pm	Front & Simcoe	Connor Morand (5:00-6:00pm) Mark Brathwaite (6:30-7:30pm)

Who will be at the festival?

Con: Beyonce isn’t in town

Pro: We have an exciting lineup of local artists ranging from Folk to Rock to Jazz & Blues who are sure to keep you entertained. Check them out!

What’s the cost?

Free! We like to keep your wallets thick.

Why should I come?

No brainer. Summer may be over but who said Fall can’t be fun? Besides, who doesn’t like a free music festival while having a hot cup of cocoa or cider?

We also think you’ll:

1. Be entertained by our awesome line up
2. Meet some of the Public Mobile team
3. Score some free swag!

Hope to see you there!

Public Mobile Community

[SD08]

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@mimmo wrote:

Did anyone go the the music fests?  Thoughts comments?

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I stopped by on the evening of Sep. 9th, during the previous music fest@.  The artist was no one I recognized, but it was okay, and I picked up a couple of things.  Otherwise, I agree with @srlawren's thoughts above on this.

[mimmo]

Did anyone go the the music fests?  Thoughts comments?

[will13am]

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@mimmo wrote:

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@ShawnC13 wrote:

@mimmo, ah so that is why I haven't seen you around.  We are just getting dumped on with RAIN right now A LOT!!!

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@ShawnC13 yeah been working on my tan, plus  didn't get too much data with my roaming package, but thats another story lol.  Not looking forward to getting back to the Victoria rain, the rain here is so much warmer and gentler lol

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You guys seem to get 100% of the yearly rain fall all concentrated over a 3 month period.  During summer, it rains less than in a desert. 

[denkom]

"Back by popular demand....Fall promo!" 

[Jonavin]

Seriously, who's demanding this?

[mimmo]

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@ShawnC13 wrote:

@mimmo, ah so that is why I haven't seen you around.  We are just getting dumped on with RAIN right now A LOT!!!

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@ShawnC13 yeah been working on my tan, plus  didn't get too much data with my roaming package, but thats another story lol.  Not looking forward to getting back to the Victoria rain, the rain here is so much warmer and gentler lol

[ShawnC13]

@mimmo, ah so that is why I haven't seen you around.  We are just getting dumped on with RAIN right now A LOT!!!

[mimmo]

I would be curious (i know we would never see the figures) how many new subscribers came during the fall promos (either of them) vs the music festivals.  i am pretty sure the fall promos would win hands down.  I believe word of mouth and price will out perform a music festival any day of the week.

Enjoy the music to all those those that go, I'll keep enjoying the Maui sun.

[danielj]

@srlawren  In one way, there is a point that the main resource would be the money that could be invested in marketing or more technical, engineering issues. The technical engineering issue, for most of us, for the most part, believe should be addressed first. But even on a marketing side Public Mobile in their original plan focused more on affordable pricing and word of mouth. Their plans now have come down a bit with the last updated to plans and pricing but there is still room for improvement. Even more affordable plans or promotional plans are something that most of the PM community would benefit from not just a few in the Greater Toronto Area that will bother to attend the music festival(s). Overall to come up with the same plan, music festival(s) again when there was at least some back lash from the community last time, claiming that it is back by popular demand, the marketing department is not that smart or creative.

As both @ShawnC13 and I have mentioned before, to have more music festivals in Toronto. Toronto is a large city but it is just one city. If they are bothering with Top Francophone contributor and attempted to get Quebec and Videotron/Quebecor customers the could also have some of the music festival(s) in other cities such as Montreal or Quebec City. They could have one in each province and diversify their marketing strategy.

The main point even if they were to put some in marketing and some in engineering there are possible smarter ways of doing so.

@srlawren  D'une certaine façon, il y a un point que la ressource principale serait l'argent qui pourrait être investi dans le marketing ou plus techniques, les questions d'ingénierie. La question de l'ingénierie technique, pour la plupart d'entre nous, devrait être traitée en premier lieu. Mais même du côté du marketing Public Mobile, dans son plan initial, se concentrait davantage sur les prix abordables et le bouche à oreille. Leurs plans ont maintenant baissé un peu avec la dernière mise à jour des plans et des prix, mais il y a encore place à amélioration. Des plans ou des plans promotionnels encore plus abordables sont quelque chose que la plupart des membres de la communauté profiteraient non seulement de quelques-uns de la région du Grand Toronto qui prendront la peine d'assister au (des) festival (s) de musique. Globalement pour revenir avec le même plan, festival de musique (s) quand il y avait au moins un fouet de la communauté la dernière fois, affirmant qu'il est de retour à la demande populaire, le département marketing n'est pas si intelligent ou créatif.

Comme @ShawnC13 et moi l'avons dejà mentionne, il y a plus de festivals de musique à Toronto. Toronto est une grande ville mais c'est juste une ville. S'ils s'embarrassent du contributeur Top Francophone et tentent d'obtenir des clients de Québec et de Videotron / Quebecor, ils pourraient aussi avoir un ou plusieurs festivals de musique dans d'autres villes comme Montréal ou Québec. Ils pourraient en avoir un dans chaque province et diversifier leur strategie de marketing.

Le point principal, même s'ils devaient en mettre dans le marketing et dans l'ingenierie, sont des moyens plus intelligents de le faire.

[mtfolks]

"Back by popular demand"...

[Acekiller]

another one of those things that don't really benefit PM users.

[srlawren]

@danielj @ShawnC13 Okay so let me start out by saying I completely agree with you guys in that there are more important things that deserve attention before stuff like this. But just to play a bit of a contrarian--and I'm not trying to defend PM here so bear with me--the reality is that these aren't really either/or things.  Fixing technical issues and improving customer experience in the online systems absolutely should be priority 1.  However, the types of resources (of the human variety) involved in those activites have very, very little overlap with the types of people involved in marketing and public event planning for events like this. It's not like you could take the [let's guess:] half-dozen or so people from the [again guessing:] marketing and public relations departments and sit them in front of the code base for the activation and self-serve systems and ask them to implement single-step add-ons, resolve activation bugs, prevent data usage figures from disappearing when your plan data runs out, etc.

Now on the third hand, the one resource that you could argue is at jeopardy here is money.  Yes, putting on this event is definitely costing PM (okay, Telus!) some money, which could otherwise be invested in perhaps hiring more of those technical resources (peeps) to work on the issues that have been arond for...oh...years now.  And the more I think about it, I'd personally much rather they did that with the money!  But we have to recognize that companies do have budgets for things like this that, in theory, help with brand awareness/recognition, community spirit, etc., and in the long run *should* lead to more interested customers and yada yada.  They set aside money and people for planning things like this, and it's not like they're going to lay off half the marketing department and spend the money on hiring more engineers to work on the stuff we think is really important.  To them, activities like this are also really important.

Anyway, just thought I'd--as PM likes to say--keep the conversation going.  LOL.  Sorry, couldn't resist.

[danielj]

Really, they think it was that popular the first time.

Think they would have gotten the idea loyal existing customers want other issues addressed first, such as making plans easer to get or bringing back even more affordable options, or more promotions.

Also, still only in Toronto. Canada is a large country and even has other cities that are major segments of the market. One of the elements of it is that they are mobile traveling festivals, they can only travel a couple of city blocks at a time?

@ShawnC13makes some good points on both fronts.

Vraiment, ils pensent que c'etait populaire la premiere fois.

Pensez qu'ils auraient compris que les clients fideles souhaitent que d'autres problemes soient abordes en premier, par exemple en rendant les plans plus faciles à obtenir ou à ramener des options encore plus abordables, ou davantage de promotions.

Aussi, toujours seulement à Toronto. Le Canada est un grand pays et a meme d'autres villes qui sont des segments importants du marche. L'un des elements est que ce sont des festivals de voyages itinerants, qu'ils ne peuvent voyager que dans quelques quartiers à la fois?

@ShawnC13fait de bons points sur les deux fronts.

[will13am]

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@stonechucker wrote:

Just like in NHL Hockey, Toronto is the centre of the universe.

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Canadian universe.  We are a mere spec of bug dust compared to the really large mega cities around the world.

[NDesai]

@ShawnC13 Agreed to what you said. 

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@stonechucker wrote:

Just like in NHL Hockey, Toronto is the centre of the universe.

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Can't complaint this year. 

[stonechucker]

Just like in NHL Hockey, Toronto is the centre of the universe.

[will13am]

Time permitting, I will check out what the big deal is.  This seems inconsistent with a discount service.  Too much bling even if it's local artists.

[CalvinW]

Lol, what demand? I only see people demanding another Fall promo. 

[ShawnC13]

@Susana_G, some may think that this is a great idea but I do think there are other things that should be taken care of first.  Should we and future customers have an easy activation process?  I see so many new customers during promo times where the activation system can't handle the influx and have people waiting for weeks for their PM service to be activated.  Streamlining the addon purchase to a single step (some rumors that this maybe already done not sure)

I am sure PM is spending money to have local bands perform but what good is that if you "recruit" new users and your self serve portal then scares them away.  Invest that money to your internal system and get it all fixed up.

Plus wasn't this already done in TO? If you are going to do this again why not another City we are all PM customers here and not everyone lives in TO (aka centre of the Universe). 

I personally would like to see improvements to the self serve than free concerts that are only for a portion of the customer base.