Not very welcoming is it.

I love branding.

These days there are alot of festivals innit. How to make your festival different and convey those differences successfully.

I was thinking about the festival website last night, thinking about websites is what I do for a living, but it is always challenging no matter how straight-forward you think a job is going to be.

We need a website doing pretty quickly, even though it is going to be an ongoing work in progress until the festival is done. You can't do any other marketing activity until you have a site to point people at.

I've written down a few pointers for myself, which could easily change.

The site needs appear cool to the music fans, parents and any other demographic we have. This is leading me to feature targeted festival content very strongly on the homepage, almost in a magazine style. With a section for music, art, kids, nature, camping. We need to show an understanding of what we're putting on and pull people in very quickly.

Check out some local competition www.limetreefestival.co.uk (note Latitude logo font - fancy stooping so low as to rip off Latitude) This is a standard bright festival site, the no brainer option - we need to appear more high brow than this. It's not a circus or a fairground we're putting on, there will be no rave tent.

All this is subtle, most festivals have a lot in common on the face of it. We need to convey cool, intelligent and fun in such a way that it's the only show in town.

Now having second thoughts on the below post, I've emailed the crew to get their thoughts, and get laughed at.

"It'll never go my boy, not in a month of Sundays" Grandpa Potts, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Now, this might turn out to be a right unnecessary diversion.

In a nutshell we want to be a Latitude up north. Latitude is a high quality middle class UK festival in Suffolk. Suffolk is 'handy' for Londoners but not if you live up here.

Thing is, it appears at least, that there is no festival called Longitude. We've just registered longitudefestival.com and .co.uk which I was surprised where free. Whether these two domains are doomed to follow my other failed domain projects time will tell.

I registered www.mcshag.com hoping for a relaxation of the prostitution laws, and supposing that there would be a market on the high street for a standardised sexual experience - brothel etique varies enormously (I've heard). Not that well thought through, but it did bring new meaning to 'supersize me' :| Another, not quite so mental but still unrealised is www.pubsalad.com, let you explore that unfinished site for yourself. I have doomed plans for a site dedicated to the spiritual side of mountain biking called 'god rides a hardtail' or similar as if I've not got enough to be doing.

On the face of it this Longitude thing is a cynical move, a cheap marketing ploy which piggy backs on someone else's hard work. It may well be taken this way UNLESS the quality of our festival matches or exceeds that of Latitude. We too have an obelisk, a lake and some woods.

It's not quite as stupid an idea as it first seems (UPDATE - no, it is). We need to do some digging into potential trade mark complications, but a google search on longitude festival brings up nothing. Not sure what festival republic are going to make of it. Horse head in the bed.

As I've mentioned before Kate and I have been putting on small gigs in the Courthouse in Thirsk for 2 or 3 years now, we do 4 or 5 a year and call them 'In The Dock'. The venue is lovely, a converted courthouse with high ceilings, a great PA and lighting gig – a lottery funded venture if there ever was one.

The venue holds 70, which we always manage to sell. We do it in a cafe style with tables and it makes for a really intimate gig. Above all else we look after the artists, the audience really listens and appreciates and buy lots of CDs. I'm sure it is the highlight of quite a few tours, and I know that sounds like us blowing our own trumpets but this is what the artists say. All good.

Anyway, these shows tick along, selling out each time and we don't have to make much marketing effort. All this is changing which is unexpected. I had thought that once we started talking about festivals these Thirsk gigs would become much less important, but they are more important than ever.

They are a marketing opportunity of course, we expect lots of people who come to them to also come to the Deer Shed, we're likely to have some of the In The Dock artists back to play the second stage in the park. But also we've just had J Tillman confirmed for a show later this year. He is the drummer from the Fleet Foxes no less and is an artist in his own right. This is a bit of a coup, the Fleet Foxes are the thinking man's festival band of the moment and these sorts of associations are extremely helpful to say the least.

Each new In The Dock show we publicise (and we think we ought to make more effort) will be a dry run for the festival. We should know who the local journalists are who could make a difference (if any) but we don't. We're also doing a survey aimed at our Thirsk audience asking them what sort of festival they might like to come to, and hoping they don't all want a top tribute band.

I've also been thinking about branding, I love branding, much more interesting than business link funding which I can't even bring myself to write about. I've got quite a few ideas for logos and websites, the researching of which took me to the Latitude web site. We've never been to Latitude but it is clearly what we are aiming at. High quality, with arts and literature (not just music), in a beautiful setting. Good vibes. And a source of ideas waiting to be plundered...

We had a big meet last night. Seven of us who are interested and keen.

We all went down to the site, the overall vibe was very positive, many had not seen the site before and were impressed and 'feeling it'.

Kate got a number of funding ideas and strategies out of it from a fella we know Andy, who is a curator and used to work at The Tate in St. Ives. I must admit that the funding side of things leaves me cold. I understand that it is very important for the arty stuff we want to do but it usually means jumping through somebody else's bureaucratic hoops, and it goes against the grain for me. This is why you need a team innit.

Much more exciting for me was some great ideas from the guys regarding site layout especially in regards to keeping the thing as weather proof as possible. We also had quite a heated discussion about music line up, with Kate and I verging on a public domestic.

We have a limited budget for music (of course.) We have a favour that we could pull in from a certain late 80's indie band, but the feeling round the table is that we shouldn't go down that route. We need to make this festival different. How often do you go to a festival and come back saying that Dreadzone (or whoever is headlining) was the best act. Never for me. You just have to look at the recent Glasto coverage on the BBC. Blur aside all the big old headlines were dull as, we know the songs and with the best will in the world they don't add much more on the night.

I like wandering about (like last time we were at Wickerman in Scotland) and happening cross bands in random tents, usually catching the last few songs of some ace outfit you've never heard of. The country is packed with brilliant acts that will never enjoy high billing or high festival fees but nevertheless will have people raving at work the next day after having parted with a tenner for a CD, and people like feeling like they've discovered them themselves.

This is decided as far as I'm concerned and it's a strong marketing angle too. Put your trust in us, dear punter, to lay on a great line up who you haven't heard of. It's what we do at our gigs in Thirsk, people come on trust now. It's that whole problem regarding how people spend their valuable leisure time. Going to see an unknown is a risk, going to the Showcase or to see a Madness tribute isn't. With an unknown the highs are higher and the lows are lower, it's a question of how you like to live your life, Dead Poets Society, carpe deim and all that...

How ambitious should you be?

Everything about organising this is quantifiable EXCEPT how many people will buy tickets. It is a COMPLETE unknown. That affects the budget which affects what sort of festival you can put on.

The realisation that you can't have everything that you want - last night we downgraded from two stages to one and the whole thing moved back into the comfort zone, but it is easy to get carried away.

We have a certain amount of money that we are prepared to lose on this event. This amount is calculated to just pass the 'death bed' test. This is a test used often by our friend Wilf. Wilf (nickname) is a local farmer who puts most of his life's decisions to the 'death bed' test. Basically when that day comes do you wish that you'd done X thing, or not - most things pass. Wilf is going to be put in charge of procurement as he spends a large % of his leisure time on ebay, buying bicycle attachments. He has the most bonkers bike rig you'll ever see which can accommodate himself and 4 kids under 7, I'll try to get a photo of it. Anyway an obsession with ebay and a list from me off desirable things and a year to find them should pay off. I've not asked him yet.

I'm in charge of marketing this. In charge of parting 500 or so unknown folks with £30 (or so.) One reason for doing a blog, other than therapy and to avoid paying work, is to have some marketing material upfront, a year ahead. I did just notice that a person I don't know has been reading it, god knows how they found it (do tell!)

Father-in-law has a field or two adjacent to the A1, I'm thinking that a banner or two on the side of the road would reach a lot of people. 'They' say you need to hit people 3 times with a message (in this case exposure to the festival) before they act, not sure how true this is...

We do need representatives within large organisations to champion us, like hospitals, councils etc.. Perhaps for a free ticket after reaching so many ticket sales.

Bit random this post, sorry bout that. That's the Guardian put off.

Smithy and Kate whitter on as I'm writing this. I let go of the bull's horns, no one notices. It is our second festival meeting, the aforementioned 'project footing'. It has been the hottest day here I can remember.

I'm sure that when Michael Eaves started Glastonbury that he didn't have 3 laptops on the table. I'm sure that he didn't have trouble getting an excel document off OpenOffice on Linux onto Windows either.

We are at the moment doing the organising quite formally, and rather business like. We're writing down all the areas of festival organising activity, the 'workstreams'. I suppose it's better to have a list of jobs now, a year before F-day and slowly add to it as new tasks occur to you.

Sand pits, graffiti walls, men's urinals, business link - more public sector. Lots of brain storming. I couldn't remember the phrase 'brain storming' (doh!) and ask. Smithy tells me that the phrase is no longer politically correct due to offending people with epilepsy...

Surely if you put on a second festival it will be SO much easier. We put on small shows at a local art centre style venue in Thirsk. They are now pretty slick, we're into double figures, everyone knows their roles and they are SMOOOOOTH. We've had artists like Boo Hewerdine, Miles Hunt, The GroanBox boys. We're hoping to get some of these guys back for the Deer Shed to play the second acoustic stage. We're having two stages we think. Our friend Claire is a live music agent and has agreed to help us book the main stage, especially if we take some of her bands. This is the big coup from Kate's trip down to London last week - as it is a new festival having someone with some clout booking bands brilliant.

I'm starting to feel ill, could be the plastic chocolate swiss roll that Smithy has brought.

Another friend Chrissie and I were talking about how at some festivals the best and most memorable moments are in the camping areas after hours. Certainly the music itself is taking up 1% of head space at the moment.

We discuss wine tasting, celebrity talks, tugs of war and creating lanes in the fields by mowing the grasses just prior to F-day.

Smithy is in charge of the Health and Safety plan. I wonder how long he can keep up this level of enthusiam and usefulness.