BuzzFeed Inc. Announces Expanded, Global Events Slate for 2023

Publisher BuzzFeed Inc. plans to substantially bolster the size of its events portfolio in 2023, chief revenue officer Edgar Hernandez told marketers during a presentation in Long Beach, California, over the weekend. As part of the expansion, ComplexCon, which hosted its seventh iteration over the weekend, will debut in three, yet-to-be-determined cities across Europe, Asia and Australia. The new outposts, along with the original Long Beach location, will host the festival on the same weekend in 2023, creating programming opportunities that stem from its concurrent nature. The publisher will also unveil or expand at least four new franchises, including Eat Your Feed Fest, the Patchwork Tour, ComplexConversations and ComplexLand, according to Hernandez. The Patchwork Tour and ComplexConversations are new concepts, while Eat Your Feed Fest launched inside of ComplexCon this November and ComplexLand, which will transition into an always-on digital product, first premiered in 2020. “We know, based on research collected through our insights group Collective, that our audience wants more in-person events,” Hernandez said. “As we thought about expanding our experiential portfolio, we thought, ‘Why are we only giving our audience this thing they love once a year? And what would it look like if some of the experiences that make up ComplexCon lived individually?’” A Blended Portfolio: How Publishers Are Integrating Their In-Person and Virtual Events The experiential expansion mirrors a larger push from across the industry to invest more heavily in events, a sector where advertiser demand has yet to suffer the downturn throttling much of the economy. Publishers including Vox Media, The Atlantic, Condé Nast, Forbes and Time have all undertaken substantial efforts this year to widen their experiential footprint. The strategy also comes at a challenging time for BuzzFeed Inc., whose rates of digital engagement fell 32% last quarter, according to public earnings reports. The publisher, like other digital media companies whose distribution strategy relied heavily on social media platforms, has been forced to adapt as the platforms have shifted their models to favor vertical video and algorithmic discovery. ComplexCon reaches for global relevance Since its launch in 2016, ComplexCon has emerged as a marquee experiential offering among digital publishers, blending exclusive merchandise drops, musical performances and brand activations into the embodiment of the convergence culture thesis that Complex champions. Bringing the tentpole product to Europe, Asia and Australia next year will open up the festival to a global audience and expand the scale it can offer to sponsorship partners. Similar to the surround sound strategy embraced by Condé Nast, publishers like BuzzFeed Inc. have increasingly sought to position their events as cultural touchstones. New franchises emerge, with a notable absence In addition to the expansion of ComplexCon, BuzzFeed Inc. will also premier or expand four other franchises: Eat Your Feed Fest, the Patchwork Tour, ComplexConversations and ComplexLand. Eat Your Feed Fest, whose inaugural show collected fan feedback over social media, combines the two culinary properties of BuzzFeed and Complex, Tasty and First We Feast. Next fall, the festival will host its first standalone showing in Chicago, with plans for the event to tour other cities across the U.S. The Patchwork Tour, developed in partnership with Live Nation Urban, will serve as a music showcase for emerging artists, and it will appear in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Atlanta in 2023. The event aims to capitalize on the musical pedigree of Complex, whose sub-brand Pigeons and Planes have chronicled the world of hip-hop since 2011. ComplexConversations, another original concept, will channel the Complex tradition of facilitating interviews with cultural figures into a permanent franchise. While not a standalone offering, the series will appear at cultural bastions like South by Southwest, Cannes and Art Basel. ComplexLand, unlike the rest of BuzzFeed Inc.'s experiential slate, occurs entirely in the digital realm, created as a means of engaging with fans during the pandemic. Next year the festival will launch its fourth iteration, which will see the virtual gathering transform from a weekend-long event into a virtual world that fans can experience at any time. Notably, the expanded events roster features no new intellectual property related to news-oriented publisher HuffPost, which BuzzFeed acquired in November 2020.

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BuzzFeed Inc. Announces Expanded, Global Events Slate for 2023

The investment comes as the publisher faces decreasing digital engagement

Mark Stenberg

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