The Electric Forest Music Festival annually brings thousands of attendees to the midwestern town of Rothbury, Michigan. Eclectic music, creative art, and hypnotic (occasionally overwhelming) light shows turn a comforting forest backdrop into an immersive experiential weekend.
That’s about the time they start losing a ton of stuff! Losing something can be a harmful disruption to your individual experience, so in 2022 the producers of Electric Forest decided to get serious about Lost and Found by bringing in the Liff App.
If you’re looking for a lost item, check out the lost and found page.
The Results
As of June 29th, the lost and found team had put in some work! 664 phones found over a festival weekend are a lot of phones (think of the constant ringing), and all but 38 have been returned so far. Not bad!
But seriously, if you’re missing your phone, please check out: out: https://electricforest.liff.app/
What made the difference?
Lost and Found can be a challenging operation, particularly at a music festival. There are two critical challenges to an essential lost and found function; the items and the consumers.
It seems obvious but quickly devolves to herding cats. EF did a great job communicating to make that herding quite a bit easier.
Before the Event: Protect Lost and Found
Before attendees even had a chance to start losing stuff, Electric Forest let them know they could register their phones directly with the lost and found.
This not only helps get their phone back but also Protects items with a matching name, like your wallet, ID, or payment cards.
Plus, attendees now know:
- There’s a lost and found
- It’s awesome
- And they know where to turn stuff in or pick things up from…
And as a result of good pre-event communication, the attendees took action that led to help improve their experience:
Honestly, one of our favorite features out there and one we’re actively expanding, check out Protect here.
On-site communication: QR Codes
But the communication didn’t stop there! All people don’t see every message, so you need to pepper in helpful information in a wide variety of places to get optimal coverage. QR Codes are an easy way to do it (we love that everyone knows how to use them).
Electric Forest created on-site signage with QR Codes to inform staff and attendees that the Lost and Found is digital and fantastic.
The Liff App may have lent a hand with the QR Codes–we’ve been doing them since before they were cool (way back in 2018).
Every item logged into the Liff App was tracked by thermally printed labels with QR Codes making the organization, recall, and check-out process crazy efficient, allowing for the return of so much stuff at the festival!
Post-Event Communication:
Festival Postcards
We’re making old-school mail cool again; at least the Music Festivals are by making cool art we get to mail to attendees. Lost and Found Postcards are unique for finding people who didn’t see the social post or the on-site messages, didn’t stop by in person, and never checked the festival website.
For items with addresses (wallets & IDs mostly), we deliver a message to their mailbox letting them know something was found and where they need to go to get it returned. Pretty cool, right?
Interested in using the Liff App?
If you’re like Electric Forest and want to deliver a better customer experience while saving your staff a ton of hassle in the Lost and Found, reach out to us:
