SOYI­NI GREY

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

Tracey Lyons-White is a Car­ni­val con­tent cre­ator.

She has 23,500 fol­low­ers on In­sta­gram where close to 4,000 peo­ple have watched her break­down of just how much mon­ey she will spend to come to T&T to play mas this Car­ni­val. And that’s not count­ing the oth­er pages that have shared her post on Tik Tok and Face­book. And the com­ment sec­tions un­der­neath each con­tin­ue to host a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion of not just the cost of Car­ni­val, but what Car­ni­val is in the first place.

“I think that with a lot of oth­er con­tent cre­ators that I’ve spo­ken to it start­ed as a pas­sion or a hob­by,” Lyons-White said.

She cre­at­ed her In­sta­gram page af­ter her men­tor sug­gest­ed it and her num­ber of fol­low­ers grew.

“I call my­self a Car­ni­val con­tent cre­ator be­cause that is all I pret­ty much do. My niche is noth­ing but Car­ni­val.”

The emer­gence of the con­tent cre­ator, some­one who us­es so­cial me­dia to share their opin­ions and ex­pe­ri­ences has been wel­comed by mar­keters. Their so­cial me­dia posts do more than just en­ter­tain, some of their view­ers are tak­ing notes.

There are brands that un­der­stand that ad­dress­ing this tar­get­ed au­di­ence can do won­ders for their sales goals, or in the case of tourism: vis­i­tor num­bers.

How­ev­er, in dis­cussing the Car­ni­val econ­o­my, much has been made of the volatil­i­ty of tourists’ in­ter­est in the fes­ti­val. Dr Joanne Tull has worked on iden­ti­fy­ing that there is a fes­ti­val econ­o­my, which has made it eas­i­er for peo­ple to un­der­stand the many el­e­ments that make up the busi­ness of Car­ni­val.

She says there is a clear pro­file of the Car­ni­val vis­i­tor.

“They are usu­al­ly be­tween ages of 22 to 36/38. One child, maybe none, pro­fes­sion­al. A lot of them have their own busi­ness. Many of them would per­ceive them­selves as en­tre­pre­neurs, some will tell you point blank, ‘I’m a hus­tler’.”

Tull said these vis­i­tors are very ac­tive on the Car­ni­val cir­cuit. These so-called “Car­ni­val chasers” are al­ways look­ing for the next new thing. They are very re­cep­tive to the opin­ions of in­flu­encers whose pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive re­view of a mas band, event or an en­tire des­ti­na­tion mat­ters to them.

In fact, many of these Car­ni­val in­flu­encers come from with­in that vis­i­tor de­mo­graph­ic. They are, she said, the Car­ni­val tourist.

“I think they are very use­ful for a Car­ni­val hav­ing a niche where it can al­ways re­ju­ve­nate it­self with­out hav­ing to do much,” she said. “Be­cause, if they like your ex­pe­ri­ence they like you. They com­ing back.”

Globey (not her re­al name) is the blog­ger be­hind Glob­al­Car­ni­val­ist.com.

She has over 29,000 fol­low­ers on her In­sta­gram. Ja­maica was one of the sev­en Car­ni­vals she vis­it­ed in 2022. Over 80 peo­ple com­ment­ed when she post­ed a pho­to of her­self in a most­ly pink Bachan­nal Ja­maica cos­tume with the com­ment: “I took this pic AF­TER a day of play­ing mas.”

A sim­ple fun and ef­fec­tive re­view of a pret­ty cos­tume she im­plied can with­stand the rigours of the road.

This is part of the at­trac­tive­ness of the in­flu­encer en­dorse­ment.

The au­di­ence feels as though they are be­ing let in on a se­cret.

An­oth­er pop­u­lar post on her feed shows the type of bag she us­es when play­ing mas, and what she con­sid­ered to be es­sen­tial items for the road.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Lyons-White has de­tailed what she us­es to cus­tomise her mas boots and gives tips on how one can com­fort­ably wear a wire bra with­out pain.

With­in the niche mar­ket that is Car­ni­val the in­flu­encer can de­mys­ti­fy key as­pects of the fes­ti­val from how to find and reg­is­ter for a band, to what par­ties to go to and more.

In fact, when Globey start­ed her blog in 2015 she did so be­cause she re­alised how dif­fi­cult it was to get in­for­ma­tion about Car­ni­val if you are based out­side T&T.

She start­ed shar­ing her process on­line and grew a cap­tive au­di­ence who now look out for her re­views, tips and ad­vice.

While in the world of Car­ni­val-in­flu­enc­ing may be a sub-set of the pop­u­lar trav­el genre, some is­lands have been pay­ing at­ten­tion.

“We know that some des­ti­na­tions have found ways to clev­er­ly use them,” said Tull. “Es­pe­cial­ly if they’ve dis­cov­ered that they are from the place through their par­ents.”

While con­tent cre­ators can, de­pend­ing on the so­cial me­dia plat­forms they are us­ing, earn mon­ey by the num­ber of views or likes their chan­nel or posts have, many al­so make mon­ey off of brand deals and spon­sor­ship.

So­cial me­dia ap­pli­ca­tions of­fer built-in da­ta-track­ing, that the con­tent cre­ators use to let po­ten­tial busi­ness part­ners know what their au­di­ence likes and the num­ber of re­spons­es a post may re­ceive.

Globey is not play­ing mas in Trinidad this year, pre­fer­ring to wait for the post-COVID kinks to be straight­ened out be­fore her planned re­turn in 2024. How­ev­er, she be­lieves T&T could ben­e­fit from a fo­cused mar­ket­ing cam­paign.

Sev­er­al re­gion­al Car­ni­vals ac­tive­ly mar­ket their fes­ti­val and she sin­gled out Bar­ba­dos for how well it pro­motes Kadoo­ment main­tain­ing a pres­ence in var­i­ous Caribbean Car­ni­vals in its quest.

Trinidad though may be com­pla­cent. “We know we are the mec­ca so we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly put the en­er­gy in­to mar­ket­ing it more be­cause we al­ready have the name as mec­ca.” But she warns, with­out evo­lu­tion, it could die.

Lyons-White will be here. She said there was no ques­tion about com­ing to play mas once the re­stric­tions were lift­ed. She said she wished that it was eas­i­er to ac­cess the cul­tur­al his­to­ry of the fes­ti­val. And like Globey she makes space on her plat­form to share what in­for­ma­tion she can to ex­pand the nar­ra­tive from par­ties and skimpy cos­tumes.

“I want peo­ple to un­der­stand that there’s so much more to it, and I don’t feel like the re­al­ly im­por­tant as­pects of the Car­ni­val and the cul­ture is mar­ket­ed the way it should be, “ she said.

Tull said ul­ti­mate­ly there re­mains a need for re­search to de­ter­mine the ex­tent of the re­la­tion­ship in­flu­encer-mar­ket­ing has with­in the Car­ni­val.

That in­for­ma­tion could then be used to fig­ure out how best their on­line plat­forms can be used to en­cour­age vis­i­tors to vis­it.