Festival Media Corporation Creates Chairman’s Council for New SponsorFest Service on Festivals.com

Festival Industry Leaders Thomas Kern and Ira Rosen Anchor New Advisory Board to Help Festival Producers Garner More National Sponsorship

Seattle, WA November 28, 2005 – Festival Media Corporation (FMC), an event sponsorship automation company, today announced the creation of a Chairman’s Council for its recently launched SponsorFest™ service on Festivals.com®. The Council will provide overview from leading festival producers and consultants to assist the growth of SponsorFest.
        SponsorFest is an Internet-based service that that matches large national consumer product and service companies’ requests for festival sponsorship with festival producers sponsor-able assets.
        Using SponsorFest, festival producers simply enter their visitor demographic information, sponsor-able assets, sponsor packages and pricing into templates on the Producer Backstage website. The completed templates are matched by FMC to requests made by national sponsor companies for specific sales promotion sponsorships.
        “We are delighted to welcome Tom Kern and Ira Rosen as charter members of the Chairman’s Council,” said Charles D. Brown, Chairman and CEO of FMC. “Producer Backstage is a revolution, not an evolution in how festival producers can present their opportunities to national sponsors, and who better to provide strategic input than festival industry leaders?”
        Tom Kern is Chairman of the International Festivals and Events Association (IFEA) and a member of the IFEA Hall of Fame. He recently retired as President of the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Traverse City, Michigan, after growing the festival to a 500,000 visitor event with national and international sponsors. “Finding and convincing national sponsor companies to sponsor your individual festival is a full-time job.” said Kern, “SponsorFest holds the promise to reduce the effort substantially, and to present the festival’s opportunities in the format and context of the national sponsor. It is a great opportunity to increase the level of sponsorship across the industry, and I’m pleased to be involved.”
        Ira Rosen, inducted in September into the IFEA Hall of Fame, is an independent event producer and consultant with national and international clients. “Festivals.com was an innovation when it was launched in 1995,” said Rosen, “providing free worldwide promotion to festivals in more than 100 countries. Producer Backstage is a breakthrough in the way festivals can show their value to national and international sponsors. I’m pleased to be able to help grow this new innovation.”
        “Gaining acceptance of innovation is always challenging,” said Brown, “even when significant benefit results from the innovation. Our Chairman’s Council will be a key part of rapidly achieving acceptance for the SponsorFest service on Producer Backstage. We are honored that Ira and Tom have agreed to join the Chairman’s Council, and we are inviting other festival industry leaders to join us. We believe firmly at FMC that a rising tide can raise all boats, and that the SponsorFest service on Producer Backstage is a sea change in the festival industry.”

About Festival Media Corporation

Festival Media Corporation (FMC) automates sponsorship rights purchasing in the fragmented festival and events industry. FMC has operated the industry’s top consumer website (Festivals.com) since 1995. Festivals.com has delivered nearly 100 million impressions, sits atop the leading search engines (keyword “festivals”) and provides information to SBC SMARTpages City Guides, The Food TV Network and other leading content websites.

FMC’s Backstage ASP platform was launched in 1995 with Festivals.com and automates the collection of festival and event information from producers. Since its inception Backstage has registered and promoted more than 45,000 events that have attracted 387 million attendees. FMC has developed relationships with thousands of these events who have benefited from FMC’s promotion services to consumers.

FMC’s new ASP products use the Festivals.com, Backstage and the Internet environment to offer both to sponsors and to event producers new value in promotion, business development, marketing and measurement.

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