Premier Brown has attempted to justify the money losing expense of the Bermuda music festival as necessary for putting Bermuda on the map.

“This is branding. It’s already known around the world that Bermuda’s festival is sold out and the entertainers we were fortunate to get this year we cannot get for peanuts.”

My argument?  Bermuda would achieve far better branding if the likes of Beyonce and Alicia Keys chose Bermuda as their destination of choice for a vacation rather than us paying top dollar to get them to come here.  Even better, if *cough* big name celebrities *cough* chose to make Bermuda their second home…  Like *cough* Oprah *cough*.  But that’s a whole different article, isn’t it?

So how could you build our brand and encourage big name personalities to want to visit the island without buying them off?  We’ve covered it before and it involves three magic ingredients:  exclusivity, exclusivity, and exclusivity.