Social media threads and Reddit forums were lighting up ahead of the 2024 Essence Festival of Culture, presented by Coca-Cola, July 4-7, in New Orleans. This year marked the 30th anniversary of the annual multiday celebration of Black culture, music and food, and the media platform’s loyal followers were eagerly awaiting the release of the Essence Evening Concert Series lineup.
“I’ve never seen in my career a community that is so engaged. This is a property that we create and we curate, but the investment that the community has in it is so high that when we weren’t, in their eyes, giving them what they wanted at the time, they let us know,” says Michael Barclay II, executive vp-experiential at Essence Ventures. “However, when we delivered, they also let us know.”
And deliver they did. Janet Jackson, Usher, Lil Wayne, Birdman, Victoria Monét and Busta Rhymes were among big-name talent that performed nightly at Caesars Superdome, and the team saw its highest-selling night in the history of the festival that Saturday.
But the music is and has been but one piece of the Essence Fest landscape. Over the years, the experience has grown to encompass more than 17 individual events at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Beginning in 2023, the team brought to life properties across the Essence Ventures portfolio, which include communities like Afropunk and Beautycon. There is partner content programming, like the Global Black Economic Forum Stage, and festival-owned experiences, like Essence Film Festival and Essence Food & Wine Festival. And of course, there are a host of major brand activations.
It’s a rich landscape of engagement with some 500,000 attendees annually and more than 1 million tuning in virtually to programming (this year’s exact figures to come). We sat down with Barclay for this year’s recap on new features, community engagement and giving host cities some love.
EVENT MARKETER: What are some initial findings or results from the event this year?
MICHAEL BARCLAY II: I think we did a great job highlighting the city of New Orleans as the centerpiece and the thing to be celebrated for our 30th anniversary of Essence Festival, because the city has been so paramount to us being able to have this event all these years. And we even started before the festival kicked off by having the city of New Orleans featured on the cover of Essence. It was a love letter to the city, and the whole issue was dedicated to it with multiple covers that were flying off the shelves. That issue is typically dedicated to one of our headliners that’s going to be on the Superdome stage. We intentionally profiled and showcased the city, and so as soon as we got into town, people were excited. I think that energy permeated through the entire weekend. It was definitely very rewarding to hear from New Orleans that we got it right.
EM: Any different decisions you made this year or new offerings in celebration of the milestone?
MB: We brought in a couple new features that we have executed outside of Essence Festival, but never inside. One was Black Women in Hollywood Weekend, our exclusive honorary dinner in L.A. that’s full of the who’s who in Hollywood, which is followed up the next day by the Hollywood House experience. So, we brought Hollywood House to New Orleans and Essence Fest this year, an aspirational experience for those who want to be in the entertainment business, whether you want to be an actor, writer or get your project funded. They got to hear from experts and have workshops, coaching and speed mentoring.
We also rebranded the In His Zone experience with a new men’s platform that Essence Ventures is creating called Suede. It was a really luxe experience with grooming and relaxation stations, mani-pedis, facials. And in addition to the conversations happening on stage [at Suede], we had a gaming area with tournaments. That was something existing that we enhanced and also rebranded as this new platform that’s soon to be launched for Essence.
EM: How have exhibitor experiences evolved over the years?
MB: I’m always astonished by our community that comes to Essence Fest. They’re willing to stand in line for things, and that lets me know that our brand partners are doing an amazing job and it shows us that the attendee expectations are being met or that they have the right expectations, and that it’s a worthwhile experience to spend that time there. We have to dedicate now space for line management for all of our partners, because we know that McDonald’s, Target and Coca-Cola—which, of course, has been our presenting sponsor for the last 29 of the 30 years—have done such a great job of creating demand for their programming, giveaways, sweepstakes and talent.
EM: What are best practices your team leans on to help meet attendee expectations?
MB: One of the main things is we’re not afraid to try things. Even things that may not necessarily go along with the tradition of the experience. Now, we understand our core audience, we know who our communities are, but we also know that our community is growing, year over year. They’re growing younger, they’re growing more diverse, there are more men. And so, we want to be inclusive generationally, gender-wise, however you identify, we want there to be a space for you at Essence Festival of Culture.
We also make sure we talk to attendees and are always creating a welcoming environment. We have a very vocal community, and we always know what they’re thinking, thanks to our social team. We want to make this cultural celebration something that the community walks away from feeling like they got what they wanted and they feel fulfilled.
EM: Let’s talk about the Superdome and that lineup.
MB: The talent team did an amazing job curating something for everyone on that stage. And talk about inclusive and welcoming, I was there with my 20-year-old son, and he had a ball. I had my 11-year-old daughter there. My parents were there dancing when Charlie Wilson was on stage. It was an amazing celebration of 30 years, which is what we wanted. We also had New Orleans hometown artists on during different moments. We wanted that stage to look like 30 years of Essence Fest. So, a nod to the past, while reaching out to the future.
We closed out with our tribute to Frankie Beverly, who was the cornerstone of Essence Fest on Sundays for many years. He retired the night before in Philly and gave his last show. So, for us to be able to honor him on stage Sunday night was an amazing moment. People showed up for All White Sunday to show tribute to Frankie. Again, it was a nod to the history of the festival, even though we are planning for the festival of the future.
EM: And speaking of the future…
MB: We’ll continue to grow. We’ll continue to bring in new experiences. The hybrid model will always be a part of it and having that opportunity for our digital audience to experience it as well. We packed pretty much all of our spaces out this past festival, so we’re running out of real estate. The digital space is definitely where we’ll lean into more.
Inside the 30th Annual Essence Festival of Culture:
Photo credits: Getty Images for Essence; Delta Air Lines
