BT creates a summer of music for 1.5m people

Last weekend the telecommunications brand offered 500,000 free tickets when it sponsored BT River of Music, one of the most ambitious music festivals ever staged in London.

Six stages in the capital at venues including Somerset House, Battersea Park and The Tower of London. each hosted music from a different continent, with headliners including the Scissor Sisters and Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra.

This Friday (27 July) the brand will launch BT London Live in Hyde Park and Victoria Park, offering a further one million tickets to the sites offering music gigs, sports activities and big screens showing Olympic action during the Games. Trafalgar Square will host BT London Live during the Paralympics.

BT's Suzi Williams told Event: "Having that critical mass [of 1.5 million visitors] has been really strong positioning. We've effectively created BT summer of music. It shows we are really consistent that music and experiences are things we are committed to."

She said that large-scale events were part of the brand's strategy to reach its audience of more than 20 million customers in the UK.

"One of the hard things for us is to do events and experiential activity which is big enough to give all those people an opportunity to feel like they are part of it," she said. "The Olympics is one of those brilliant events that gives millions of people the chance to be involved in something that BT has touched."

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Read the full profile of BT's event activity in the Brandwatch feature in September's issue of Event magazine by subscribing here.

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