The ideal of a brand is to launch a product and build a passionate community around it whose commitment drives sales and business results. But there are some products that already reach the market accompanied by thousands of followers who, without knowing it, have actively participated in their design.

These are music festivals such as “Love the 90’s”, “Millenial Nostalgia” or “I love reggeaton”, created by the entertainment company Sharemusic!, now part of Superstruct Iberia, one of the largest festival promoters worldwide. Its success is based on a combination of active listening, data analysis and the magic of music, and can serve as inspiration for other companies regarding co-creation, community building and product design.

Hugo Albornoz, Brand Partnership Director at Superstruct Iberia, shared the details of this formula at Visa Marketing Now 2025, a meeting promoted by Visa and designed together with reason.Why in which marketing professionals shared knowledge and experiences with the intention of better understanding the present to anticipate the challenges of the future.

In this summary video you can see some highlighted parts of Hugo Albornoz’s intervention at the event. The main conclusions of what he conveyed to the attendees are collected below under these lines.

The Superstruct model has been driven by a change in user behavior and finds its main expansion in the explosion of live in-person experiences. And the saturation of the digital ecosystem has given rise to hyperfatigue that pushes consumers to seek more authentic interactions in the physical world. “The territory of live music, and especially festivals, allows us to disconnect from a very saturated reality and connect more intensely to another.“Hugo commented during his speech.

This is why brands are increasingly betting on experiential marketing as a lever to fight consumer disaffection, especially Millennials and Generation Z; and seeking to link, specifically, to music and festivals. They also take advantage of the good positioning of the Spanish market in this industry, favored in terms of tourism and meteorology.

First the community, then the product

Sharemusic!, like other companies in the sector, has capitalized on all this, but has found two key territories of differentiation. On the one hand, nostalgia as a way to connect emotionally with different generations of consumers; and on the other, the way of developing the final product, which moves away from the traditional way of planning a festival.

Thus, the vast majority of the market creates its experiences by first conducting market research and analyzing artists, and then defining the product, creating their social channels and, finally, launching the show and planning means to promote it. But the model that Albornoz proposes develops in the opposite way: starting with the community and ending with the product.

As Hugo Albornoz explained, the first step of the formula is to identify content gaps and create “ghost communities” related to the product and associated with the most appropriate channel for each user segment. For example, the “Love the 90’s” festival finds its origin in the community “I used to party in the 90s!” on Facebook, while “Love the Twenties” did so on Instagram and “I love reggeaton” did so on TikTok.

“The process is the same. Ghost communities are created, which do not have a commercial product behind them and for two years they feed on content. What we do is generate a large audience base among people who have the same affinity“Albornoz explained.”With the audience created, the product is defined based on real insights, such as interaction with an artist’s content or its virality.”.

Combine data, strategy and magic

Under this model, the product is born with an audience already created and predisposed to consumption. In fact, that same audience is what amplifies, communicates and gives notoriety to the show, which reduces the need for a large investment in media. In addition, this formula also minimizes economic and business risk, because it practically reaches the market tested by the target audience itself. “We bring together data, logic and magic“, commented Albornoz. “When the product is launched, consumers feel that their Spotify playlist has become a reality and they are not aware that they were the ones who designed it.”.

The model has allowed us to promote the growth of festivals, which already have different editions in our country. They have also been scaled to other markets, with executions in Mexico or Chile, where the same parameters have been met. There the process of creating experiences is very similar, although adapted to the idiosyncrasies of each country and cultural identity.

The festivals created by the company, in addition to being specific events, have also become platforms, allowing a relationship always on with the audiences. They are, as Albornoz points out, a channel in themselves. “If you wanted to connect with young people in 95, or even in 2005, you would put a radio spot on Los 40. Now the main means of communication to reach them are these types of experiences.“, said.

The formula that Hugo Albornoz shares shows that it is not enough to simply support the business in fertile ground, in this case, music; but it is also necessary to build from strategy, data and knowledge of the audience. “Music is a territory with a lot of magic, but we provide a way to create a product and connect with consumers“, he concluded. ““We are able to generate cultural relevance at scale because we move passions from all areas.”

After his presentation, we were able to talk with Hugo Albornoz and he explained more about the possibilities of combining this logic with “magic”, the importance that experiences are gaining today or what he does to manage the speed at which the current context moves.
You can see more in the following video and here you have the rest of the interviews we did with some of the attendees.