EPISODE 222: Marketer of the Month Podcast with Andrea Faroppa

Hey there! Welcome to the Marketer Of The Month blog!

We recently interviewed Andrea Faroppa for our monthly podcast – ‘Marketer of the Month’! We had some amazing insightful conversations with Andrea and here’s what we discussed about –

1. Creating a collaborative space where innovation thrives, driven by creative minds and technology.

2. Navigating obstacles through teamwork, passion, and focus on delivering meaningful experiences.

3. Exploring AI’s impact on art and tech industries, fostering education and knowledge transfer.

4. Prioritizing meticulous curation for music, art, and innovation to offer a holistic experience.

5. Incorporating new presentation formats, production techniques, and interactive designs.

6. Celebrating the multicultural and multi-generational nature of Sónar attendees.

About our guest:

Andrea Faroppa is the Head of Sónar+D, the innovation and culture program within Sónar, Barcelona’s renowned music festival. With over 10 years of experience in the creative industries, She is passionate about building connections between the creative sector and technological brands, institutions, and cross-disciplinary projects. She leads the development of strategic partnerships, branded content, and event production for Sónar+D, focusing on fostering the convergence of creativity, technology, and society.

Brand Beats: Lessons in Cultural Marketing from Sónar’s Global Stage

The Intro!

Host: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Outgrow’s Marketer of the Month. And for this month we are going to interview Andrea Faroppa who is the Head of Sónar+D.

Andrea Faroppa: Great to be here. Thank you.

Don’t have time to read? No problem, just watch the Podcast!

Challenge yourself with this trivia about the exciting topics Andrea Faroppa covered in the podcast.

Launch Interactive Quiz

Or you can just listen to it on Spotify!

The Rapid Fire Round!

Host: So first question, at what age do you wanna retire?

Andrea Faroppa: 45.

Host: How long does it take for you to get ready in the mornings?

Andrea Faroppa: It takes me an average of 30 minutes.

Host: How many hours of sleep can you survive on?

Andrea Faroppa: I can survive on very little sleep. I can tell, I’m good with a power nap, like 25 minutes. I’m good.

Host: How many cups of coffee do you drink per day?

Andrea Faroppa: Zero. Oh, no caffeine. No, that’s good. No coffee.

Host: What is a habit of yours that you like and what is a habit of yours that you hate?

Andrea Faroppa: I like the habits that I have on my weekends, you know, like resting and enjoying and seeing my friends, and the ones I don’t like, I’m not a morning person. 

Host: We can all relate to that. 

Andrea Faroppa: I’m very unhappy with this.

Host: How do you relax?

Andrea Faroppa: I relax by watching documentaries. I learn a lot and being with my friends in the beach in Barcelona. 

Host: Ideal spot for vacationing.

Andrea Faroppa: That would be Cabo Pallon in Euro Y.

Host: Pick one. Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk.

Andrea Faroppa: None of them.

Host: Taylor Swift or Beyonce?

Andrea Faroppa: Beyonce.

Host: Beyonce or Lady Gaga?

Andrea Faroppa: Beyonce.

Host: What’s a key factor that helps you maintain your work-life balance?

Andrea Faroppa: The key factor to achieve a work-life balance. That’s a very good question. I think it’s important to understand that you need to finish work. You don’t have to work all day every day. It’s very important to have free time so you can have new ideas coming in. So, I’ve been very strict with that and that’s good. I’ve improved a lot.

Host: One-word description of your leadership style.

Andrea Faroppa: My leadership style is millennial.

Host: And the last question, what’s the most valuable skill you’ve learned in your whole experience or your whole life?

Andrea Faroppa: The most valuable skill is to be empathic, really pay attention to other human beings, and be respectful of their time. I think that’s a great scale. Yeah. It’s a hard scale that you have to know how to acquire.

The Big Questions!

Host: Okay. So that brings us to the end of the rapid-fire round. Thank you so much. Very spontaneous, and very well answered. Fantastic, now we are gonna be taking your main interview. So I’m gonna take part in the long-form questions. The first question is, Sónar+D has built a global reputation for bridging the worlds of creativity and technology. How do you foster this collaboration, and what impact does it have on shaping the future of both sectors?

Andrea Faroppa: Yes, certainly. So SónarSónar has always been, there we go. So Sónar has always been about innovation, and it’s always been about programming proposals that foster a space for creative people, for artists, and for explorers to really thrive on it. When Sónar started in 1994 the scope was its advanced music festival. At that time, the concept of advanced music was very related to electronic music and all the different genres of electronic music. Fast forward 20 and 30 years, the concept of advanced music comes from different genres of music. And if we apply that to the program we have created in Sónar+D, which is literally Sónar+D the Innovation Lab of Sónar. Then, when you mix technology and creativity in an event like this, you foster curiosity. We can really see innovation happen. And this is an event that is not only for creative people, this is an event that’s also for innovators wherever your sector is from. So it’s very important to have this approach for us so we can really foster again, you know, a space of collaboration and a space where innovation can happen and that we can demonstrate that creativity is a very important tool for innovation, and it’s one of the tools that is pushing the world forward.

Host: Sónar+D promotes a cross-disciplinary approach to technology and culture. What challenges do you face in creating such a diverse program, and how do you overcome them?

Andrea Faroppa: So we say that Sónar+D is an Antidisciplinary event, not cross-disciplinary. What does anti-disciplinary mean? Literally, it’s, you have different events around the world that they are, we call it like vertical events. No, we have events for mobile technology, we have events for the health industry, we have events for the music industry, etc. And in Sónar+D in Sónar, we do mix different disciplines and different sectors and different industries. It’s a meeting point for, I was saying before innovators from different industries, but our scope is around creativity and putting the creators and the artists in the middle of it. So it’s definitely a very challenging event to produce. But the information, the intake that we have as a team, when we are thinking about the content, and when we are researching for different profiles, it’s so inspiring. Like, we have a big time of the year that we dedicate to content programming, and it’s amazing the things that we find out. It’s amazing the things we learn from all the corners of the world. And it really keeps us motivated. Do know that Sónar, it’s it’s an event that the curation of the content is a key part of it. We really pay attention to curation, everything we do, the people we invite, the color of the signs, the color of the carpet on the floor of the event, everything is very carefully selected because we want to offer a full experience not only for the attendees but also for the participants to foster this collaboration and these meaningful contacts that they can make. So it is very challenging but we overcome everything. You know, when you work in the live events industry when you open the doors, the first day of the event, you see coming to life all those emails and all those calls and all those meetings that you had along the year. And it’s very rewarding. So all the challenges they give you are like a very nice reward at the end of the day when you see everybody enjoying it, having fun and making very nice contacts and friends in Sónar. That’s nice.

Host: So we wanna know if you had any one such experience that derailed you off your passion for working at Sónar or any such challenge that you faced that almost made you not wanna work here?

Andrea Faroppa: That’s a very good question. Good. I don’t think I ever had a situation in my years in Sónar where I faced a challenge that I didn’t want to, that made me want to quit everything and leave it behind. I do have to say that we have a great team. The human-like quality or the human, the humanity of the team really does make you know, like try harder and work harder. And whenever we have found this kind of challenges that we find a lot of them along the years, you know, and of course, the pandemic was a big moment, and a big challenge for all the live events industry. But it really showed you that when different people come together and when you have a feeling of a team you can overcome this. You have the support of your teammates to your teammates. You have the support of the company, and you have the support at the end of the day of our audience and our public that we really appreciate it. So whenever I had found this kind of very, like, hard challenges that made me, made me question like, oh, what am I doing with my life? I don’t know. They go away very, very quickly because I always get this memory of, you know, what happened last year when we opened the doors and everybody was enjoying it, and then we can see all these ideas coming to life. And again, working with a great team of people really does help you make it through.

Host: Can you talk about the AI and Music Festival under the Sónar+D umbrella and its potential for driving innovation in both the creative and tech industries?

Andrea Faroppa: Yes, definitely. So, the AI and Music program, it’s an initiative from start program of the European Commission. The first time we organized this festival was in 2021. But just to show how Sónar+D has you know, this is like fast-forward scope. So the first time we talked about AI in the program of Sónar+D  was in 2017. At that moment, we had researchers and scientists talking about this new technology that’s gonna change everything, but it was very technical, you know, it was inspiring, but very technical at that time. Since 2017, every year we’ve been constantly talking about AI and every year we have a chance to summon more people to the conversations, different profiles. So fast forward to 2020, 2021, and especially 22 and 23, when AI became more massive, let’s say technology, more accessible technology. We’ve been organizing this festival or this program of AI music inside of Sónar with the aim on the one hand, empowering the artists and the creators and the people to learn about this technology. This is very important. When, when the AI boom came, there was a lot of nervousness in the creative industries about, you know, the role of the artist, the role of the creator. So there was a big panic around AI. So we took at that moment the position of summoning experts from AI, from different fields, lawyers, anthropologists engineers, artists, policymakers, etc, to have a big conversation about this, to empower and educate the people who are using this technology. Because information is powerful at the end of the day. And this technology is like the internet, you know, it’s going across all industries. It’s affecting and impacting our everyday lives, no matter what we do, no matter how whole we are, all we are, or where we’re from. So on that side, we need to be that place where people can get a bit more informed about this technology. And on the other hand, it shows the place that Sónar+D has as a knowledge transfer tool. So there are a lot of things that happen in laboratories or in university classrooms, or in the conference rooms of big corporations and big companies that may take a long time to reach society. Of course, media and journalism, it’s a big part of knowledge transfer. And for us in Center plus D we really do take this to, as an important mission of the event. How can we help take these concepts and take these ideas from the classrooms, from the labs, from the conference, and meeting rooms of companies, and make them accessible to the most people that we have? So AI music is a big part of that. How can we help you understand what AI is? Maybe if we present a show or if we co-produce a performance we can help you at least see it. And then through the workshops and the conferences that we program, we can help you understand it better.

Host: So since we’ve already been talking about how AI has reached a lot of people and how it’s massively expanding. And given that we are at a tech event. Obviously the integration of AI and the integration of GPT or all the other stuff is helping you guys grow up to a huge level. So, keeping that in mind, we wanna ask you, what is your future plan for Sónar? Where do you see it reach? Because right now your main event is the one in Barcelona. Can we see it expanding to other continents, and other countries, and can you just tell us a bit more about it? 

Andrea Faroppa: Certainly. So Sónar has, as I told you, it started in 1994. And it, since 2002, we’ve started the, what we call the Sónar World Edition. So since 2002 until right now, sort of 22 years later, Sónar has been taking place in more than 70 cities around the world. We started, you know, in different cities in Japan and then different cities in the US, in Europe, Latin America and then we had additions in Iceland, in Hong Kong, in Asan. And every time we go around the world, what we want to showcase is the local talent the local creative tech community, and the local innovation that’s happening. In that place. We bring our brand and our platform that we know it’s very potent and also a platform of visibility and a big brand. So we can share it with the artists and the creators the innovators of those places. And we can give them voice, you know, and give them, help them have visibility. Right now, in the last, let’s say since 2017, we have been organizing a Sónar edition in Istanbul. And since 2002, sorry, since 2022, we have been organizing the Sónar li boa edition. So at the moment, we have Barcelona, li, Boa, and Istanbul going on, and we’ve been talking with different partners from different cities. I cannot tell you about it, but our scope is wherever we see that there’s an interest of a city to have this space and if we get reached by them, because we never go to a place like, oh, we want to have a Sónar here. We get approached by local partners and the local community to invite us to have an addition of Sónar in those places. So stay tuned. Let’s see what happens.

Host: With a variety of initiatives such as the Project Area, how do you prioritize innovation within the event and ensure it stays at the cutting edge of tech and creative industries?

Andrea Faroppa: That’s a very good question because in the live events or in the festival, in the congress industry. It’s very competitive right now. And I say it in a good way. You know, I think after the pandemic there’s been a lot of new events and congresses and festivals. So it’s very nice to have more offers, let’s say, for the audience and also around the world. You know, it’s, it’s been growing up for us in Sónar, the innovation, of course, a big part of it comes from the content, the artists that we invite, the participants that we invite to speak or to do the masterclass. But there’s a big part of our innovation that comes from formats and comes from the production and the design, but also how we communicate the festival. So Sónar was one of the first festivals that introduced the alphabetical order lineup. I’m sure you’ve seen, you know, in a music festival, there’s a very standardized design of the lineup where they have like, a big name in the first tier, and then the second tier with smaller names and so on and so on. So the organizations are, or the organizations are maybe guiding the audience to identify who is the headliner of that music festival. In Sónar, we, we never done that. All the artists are in alphabetical order, and we trust in the intelligence of our attendees. You choose your own headliner, you choose what you want to see. But of course, we are going to guide you, and we are going to help you navigate Sónar because it’s a discovery festival. You know, we mix worldwide headliners and big artists with up-and-coming talent. We showcase what’s hot now, but we also showcase maybe what’s going to be hot in five years or 10 years, you know? And you know, since we started, we had artists that were playing in Sónar for the first time in their life, like playing a big festival in their, in their life. And fast forward to the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years, we’ve seen them headlining very big international festivals. And that makes us very proud because we are an event, we are a cultural event that we want to be part of the story of different artists. And this also applies to Sónar+D, the innovation, of course, it’s the core of what we are looking for, but with a perspective from the creativity, you know, like innovation pushed by creativity, it’s an event where culture and creativity meet with innovation and technology. So, as you said, the project area is this exhibition space where we select around 80 projects a year, and they come from established companies related to the creative industries to startups, universities, synthesizers modular, and music tech companies. Then, we have artists showcased there. So it’s an exhibition space that we strategically organize and put in between the Sónar+D program, the professional program, and the music program. So we know that the people who come only to the music festival and the people who come to Sónar+D, can all meet in this exhibition area because it’s a space that breaks the dynamic for the attendees. When you go to a music festival, you dance, you listen to music, you talk with your friends, you know when you go to a Congress, you also are listening to the conferences and you are attending a workshop. But in this project area, in this exhibition program, we break that dynamic. You can touch, you can play, you can hear, you can paste, and you can talk to the creators firsthand. So we all also offer new experiences for the audience, you know, so if you buy a ticket to Sónar, you can have a lot of different experiences inside the same venue. So innovation also comes from, from that side, you know, not only about the latest technology, not only about the latest sound system that we also have, of course, because we love good sound, but it also comes about being respectful of the audience who is coming to our festival and spending time and energy to attend. So we can offer them a wide variety of experiences as we can in three days in Barcelona, in Lisboa or in Istanbul.

Host: Collaboration is key at Sónar+D. Can you share an example of a meaningful partnership that emerged from the event, and how it influenced both participants and industries involved?

Andrea Faroppa: Yes, certainly. We have very good examples of great partnerships and GA case studies. The first one that comes to my mind right now is Seidor. Seidor is a digital consultancy that’s from Catalonia. And, so it was very, it’s a very interesting story because two people from their team attended a masterclass in Sónar+D in 2019. And from there on they were like, we want to partner with this brand, we want to partner with this, with this event. So fast forward in 2023, they became the main sponsors of Sónar+D. And we do have this very nice relationship where we share values and we share perspectives. And for us, that is very important. So stay there are very, they the partnership we’ve done with them. It’s not only about them presenting content that we work together. They have presented Kate Darling in 2023 as an expert and researcher in robotics and AI from the US and this year Sasha Constanza, who’s a political activist and sociologist. And so we have presented this content with them, but they are, we also organize during Sónar Platy a big meeting point for all their employees and all their clients. So they can come to Sónar+D for a full day and have like a private conference and more like professional content, and then a more like leisure activity where they have lunch and they and they then rest enjoy the rest of the festival. That’s a very nice story of, you know, like somebody who came to Sónar+D and got inspired. And then it’s the main sponsor in our most, one of the most cherished partners that we have because it’s so organic and natural to work with them. And then we have a big story, a long story of great relationships and partnerships. The Melia Hotels through the Mi by Melia brand has been with us since 2019. We’ve been developing content with them and helping them also to gain brand visibility. There are different reasons why the brands approach Sónar or Sónar Plati because we can help them really acquire their goals, you know, and in a very organic way. We all work with all our partners and with all the brands that support us to create unique content. And all the proposals that we work on are ad hoc, you know, are tailor-made. We get together with different brands and different companies, and we have many meetings where we try to understand what are their goals and how we can help them reach those goals in a very organic way. Because Sónar and Sónar+D are not like a typical event. So for them to reach the maximum visibility or to reach the contacts that they want, we work very well together with them. We’re also aware that there are a lot of companies that have been created because of Sónar, people who got inspiration from Sónar, or people who saw a conference in Sónar+D and got an idea to create their company, like Data Mind Audio, or to people who met during Sónar+D like Bru Mix. It’s an immersive technology company, and there are many, many examples of those partnerships, but I think these are the most visible ones that we have.

Host: How does your work with key stakeholders like the European Commission, influence the direction of Sónar+D and help shape broader discussions on innovation and technology?

Andrea Faroppa: So with the European Commission, as I mentioned before, we’ve been through their starts program starting with science, technology, and the arts. We have been working with them, for a long time, and we have a lot of different stakeholders. The European Commission, it’s one of them. Then of course we have the city council of Barcelona. We have the government of Catalonia, the government of Spain, and then of course all the different partners and sponsors, and of course the audience, that comes to us. So as I said before, being Center plus the platform for knowledge transfer in these public institutions, these stakeholders do see the value of having a platform and a cultural event like Sónar and Sónar+D to disseminate different showings and different conclusions as they know that they can find their scope and a perspective of event and an experience of events that’s very unique and very peculiar where you can have this mix of business and connections, networking and this community feeling all happening inside. One of the biggest music festivals in Europe and one of the pioneering electronic music festivals in the world. Sónar is a very respected brand, and I’m very proud to be part of this project, I’m very proud to have the chance to share this platform with creators and thinkers.

Host: How do you handle the challenges of producing such a large-scale event, especially when balancing innovation, creativity, and global collaboration?

Andrea Faroppa: An amazing team of human beings? That’s how we make it happen, and that’s how we face the challenges together. There are a lot of parts involved in doing a live event, a lot of invisible threats millions of emails and thousands of phone calls, and a big group of human beings making this possible. This is what really makes it happen, you know, like a great team great support system also from the company. A great, also great support system also from the public institutions in Barcelona, in Catalonia, and in Spain. And also, the key or the secret mix, it’s our audience. We love the people of Sónar. We love how respectful they are and how curious they are. And it’s such a diverse group of people. We have the demographics of the people who come to our event, and it’s so diverse in age, location, gender, and in so many ways in professional sectors. And it’s so nice to walk around the event in Barcelona, in Lisboa, in Istanbul, or when we had these editions in Hong Kong or in re HAC or Buenos Aires. And you can always feel that you are in Sónar because we share this respect curiosity, and creativity that really helps it bloom. It is of course, very challenging. Every year we face big challenges because of offering the artists and the creators a space to express themselves and offering companies and our partners also a proposal to be disruptive about their brand presence, for example, or their sponsorship proposal. It is very challenging in terms of production because we need to change everything every year. And there are a lot of last-minute changes, of course, but that’s what keeps us going. You know that this is part of the brand. And at the end of the day, as I said before, when we open the doors and we see that everything is running smoothly we are very proud of, of all the hard work we made. But I insist we cannot do this alone. We need all our stakeholders, of course, and the amazing team we have to make it happen.

Host: How does Sónar+D’s international presence, particularly at global events like GITEX Dubai, create new opportunities for fostering cross-border collaboration and partnerships?

Andrea Faroppa: Certainly, we are very happy to be part of Guy Tech Dubai. It’s the first time we are coming, to this region of the world. We have great partners and great relations with people from Asia, the US Canada, and of course all of Latin America. And we have great partners, in Africa too, and of course in Europe. But we were so excited when Tex invited us to be part of the Expand North Star program, where we presented a selection of projects that were part of Sónar Plati 2024. And to be here and to get, to meet a lot of people from around the world, especially from this region of the world, really does make us very excited and very much looking forward to the future of building a bridge between Barcelona and Dubai and all the other regions of, of the Middle East that we can attend to, so we can keep on fostering this cross-pollination as we call it. You know it’s very inspiring to come to Tex and to expand North Star and to see how other cultures, how other, other countries are working and developing different technologies. And you can really see there’s a lot of them who have a very disruptive way of presenting it. So for me, it’s like music to my ears to get to know them. And having an event like Tex, it’s very important to showcase the talent that it’s in this region of the world. And it’s been a great experience and we’re very much looking forward to welcoming all the people we met here in Dubai to Barcelona next June 2025, and to keep on developing these relationships and to keep fostering collaboration.

Let’s Conclude!

Host: Thanks, everyone for joining us for this month’s episode of Outgrow’s Marketer of the Month. That was Andrea Faroppa who is the Head of Sónar+D.

Andrea Faroppa: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Host: Check out the website for more details and we’ll see you once again next month with another marketer of the month.