Q’s With Superfly’s Jennifer Justice: The Biz-Dev Pro Is Taking The Festival Promoter To Another Level

Jennifer Justice: When I came on we only had Outside Lands and Bonnaroo and we really wanted to extend our portfolio. So we’ve been analyzing the market and figuring out where to extend into. Each one is like its own brand and business. We ended up launching three [Lost Lake, Clusterfest and Grandoozy] in the last 2½ years I’ve been here. We decided not to do Lost Lake this year but we’re making sure the other ones are on track. We’re constantly analyzing and creating a process for that internally and then figuring what we want to launch in 2019 and expand the portfolio of all Superfly experiences. 

Not in the near future. 

I can’t really talk about any of them, but we have about 20 things in the pipeline at any given time. We’re thinking about areas that have kind of blank spaces and the experiential, not just kind of an a la carte music festival. That’s currently what I’m working on day-to-day.

Definitely. This is location-based themed entertainment where you take a space and you activate it for a long period of time and not just for three days. We build these massive cities and I think what we’re seeing is people want that in their own hometown so they don’t have to travel to these experiences. And we basically incubate them within our festivals.  At Clusterfest we incubated a re-creation of both Paddy’s Pub from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and Jerry’s apartment from “Seinfeld.”  

One of our biggest agency record clients is Citibank and their entertainment marketing. Everything from doing Global Citizen activations to activating at other festivals and their ProCamp programs, we have something happening constantly. If Citibank pre-buys a festival package or a concert tour, our team is the one doing the social media marketing for it. We’ve done Google IO’s sales conference. And we did Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. We can build these incredible experiences for big brands. 

– Jennifer Justice

Stacy is awesome. She worked at Adult Swim and we worked with her through our agency. Superfly might have been around for 20 years but you’ve got to keep on your toes and keep figuring out what your target audience is. The guys started when they were in their 20s. They’re now technically Gen X. We have Millennial generation and really Gen Z is our new target market. It’s really important to understand their buying patterns and what they want and how you build out individual brands using both your instinct and your experience coupled with your data. And so that’s really what she’s come in to do. She’s an amazing addition to the team.

I remember one article with Paul Tollett in the New York Times talking about marketing for Panorama and a similar thing happening with Bonnaroo. When Coachella and Bonnaroo were coming up it used to be they would just send emails and people would buy tickets. It doesn’t happen like that anymore. The landscape is so saturated. We’ve got to make sure we know what the target audience wants. You have to make sure you’re on your toes in marketing and branding and building it authentically to the audience that you want to buy your tickets. 

We have deals with both of them and love working with both of them. Our main goal is to grow the business. We would not be opposed to having conversations, but it’s not really where we are right now. The Superfly founders have been together for 20 years and they still have goals and they want to do it internally. We want to stay fresh. We’re open to a lot of things but at the moment we’re fine as we are. 

He’s a very unique individual. Usually you’re left-brain or right-brain, he can be both. And he is very clear in what he wants. And he is completely fine to walk away from a 

deal if it doesn’t meet what he wants. He gave me the bravado to go out on his behalf and get him whatever I could and do the best I could, and really fight for him and not be scared of what the other side would do. His brain works in very mysterious ways. It doesn’t forget anything. He’s a very loyal person and he really does believe in the people he surrounds himself with. He does challenge you. Every time I’d go in and go over something I was always nervous. But that’s how I should be. I should be on my toes at all times. He was an amazing boss and partner and mentor. I learned that ownership and control over your destiny is really the best thing you can do for yourself.

I saw Pearl Jam when they were Mookie Blaylock at tiny little places. I saw Soundgarden over and over and over again. When I had my going away party the guys from Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Candlebox, Green Apple Quick Step, My Sister’s Machine, and Alice In Chains were all there. It was a small scene and we didn’t realize how big it was because there was no frame of reference. We met all these A&R guys who would come around, but we didn’t understand how big it was across the entire world. 

I was telling this story actually about this band that I was like, “I know they should have made it.” They were so talented and they got signed to Geffen and it didn’t work out. They were called Eastern Conference Champions and their album was beautiful and people should have heard it. I’m telling this to the programming people at Superfly and as I’m telling the story they look at me and go, “I’m pretty sure they are now a band called Mondo Cozmo.” And I totally looked it up and they booked them at Bonnaroo. 

You’ve got to keep moving and you’ve got to keep going. And for me there’s always a learning opportunity. You have to keep learning and never get comfortable. Whenever I’m comfortable, I get bored and I want to continue to push myself. Whenever I find myself in a funk or something it’s probably because I’m failing myself. I’m not pushing myself to be more challenged and to make things how I really should.

When I worked at Roc Nation, Jay was really the deciding factor, but these guys have their succinct roles. Rich runs the agency. He’s more of the networker on the agency side of things. And that’s a very clear role. Jon is the macro visionary. And Kerry is definitely a visionary and creative along with Jon and does the attention-to-detail stuff working with Jon. A lot of activations are Kerry’s – Baconland is a very Kerry thing. Jon is thinking about the overall creative. Rick is dealing with the actual company in a COO kind of role for lack of better term, really the operations and nuts and bolts of Superfly.

Building out the corporate development and strategy I mostly work with Jon and Rick. And then help out wherever I can with the agency, structuring deals or bringing in deals, or business for the overall company. And with Kerry on how to build out his projects so they’re incubated. But mainly Jon and Rick. 

On the agency side, we’ll continue to grow. On our IP side, you will see us getting into other avenues of ownership of IP that are disrupting experiential events that have 

existed for a long time but need to be redone and rethought to target this new demographic. We’ll be doing things that will exist in a longer period of time and diversify 

our portfolio. The stuff that exists now will continue to grow. Clusterfest in particular has the opportunity to tour in different markets. And then there’ll be other experiential, probably longer-term projects. One of the things I say is instead of being everything to a lot of people we’ll be something very specific to a specific group. And being able to do that and execute that across many territories.