At the MusicWeek/Ricall Music & Brands conference yesterday (what do you mean you didn’t know it was on this week?), Nokia’s Head of Marketing announced that they will cease headline sponsorship of the ever growing IOW Music Festival.
Nokia have been official sponsors of the Festival for the last three years but they have now decided there are other ways to associate themselves with music.
Simon Lloyd (head honcho in the Marketing Department) said: “Isle of Wight has been good for us for the last three years and we got involved at a time when we were just formalising our music strategy.
“We have realised that a brand of our size does not need to put our name on those kind of events. We get the same cut-through by just being involved and we don’t need to necessarily badge the event.�
Having a whinge at the precious nature of music artists (surely not!), he went on to say: “If it’s about the music experience it does not really matter who the label or who the artist is as long as they are in the right place in the market. If the artist gets too precious we can move on to someone else.�
So, I wonder who will step into their shoes next year?
