Cherry Blossom leader wants to keep festival fresh, growing

With the Cherry Blossom Festival set to begin its 2015 edition this week, there’s one challenge organizers seem to face every year: how to keep the festival fresh yet still true to its roots.

Jake Ferro, the festival’s president and CEO, admits the challenge isn’t an easy one. And it’s a challenge above and beyond simply managing a series of events that will draw between 150,000 and 200,000 people to Macon over the next couple of weeks. Even with meticulous planning, it’s difficult not to experience hiccups, especially when taking into account factors such as the weather that can’t be controlled.

“We’re very weather-dependent,” Ferro said. “March, as everyone knows, is probably the wettest month of the year. ... During that 10-day period, if you get two or three days of rain, it shuts down most activities. So what we’ve tried to do, as much as possible, is to try to have rain plans. In other words, if you could move the outside event inside, that would help. But not everything can be moved inside. For example, Central City Park -- you don’t move that whole entire park inside. So when it rains, Central City Park has had a tough time of it.”

Organizers are constantly making adjustments to compensate. For example, they made the decision last year to change the street party -- one of the festival’s signature events -- to an indoor music festival because the party had been rained out for four straight years, causing huge financial losses.

Ferro recently said the current goal is for attendance to increase by 10 percent each year, which he thinks is achievable. For the most part, attendance has leveled off, staying relatively consistent year to year but not showing much growth.

Ferro said he thinks increasing marketing in Bibb’s surrounding counties would be a huge shot in the arm to attract midstaters, many of whom have never attended.

The Georgia Association of Broadcasters has a 15-second spot running all through the month of March and is blanketing the entire state.

“We’re trying to reach out beyond just Bibb County and Macon,” Ferro said.

Ferro said he tries to encourage people to give the festival a chance by attending just one time.

Part of the issue organizers face is the perception that the Cherry Blossom Festival is aimed mostly at families with young children and at senior citizens. Ferro said the festival also is trying to attract the 18-to-40 crowd that falls in between.

“One of the things we’re doing this year is using social media to pull in (visitors in that age range),” he said.

Ferro noted that the events at Central City Park are geared toward all age groups, and events such as Beers & Brats and many of the concerts are geared toward the Generation X crowd.

Ferro said it’s important to keep the festival fresh by introducing new concepts, while at the same time keeping fan-favorite events such as the parade, the pink pancake breakfast and the bed race. He welcomes new ideas for future festivals.

“I want everybody’s thoughts. How can we make this better?” he said. “The key is never-ending improvement. We’ve had some great festivals, and this (year’s) festival promises to be very, very good. Then next year, we’d like to make it better than this year. It’s always about finding a way to improve.”

Ferro also is expanding the festival’s footprint beyond its usual 10 days. This year’s festival, which begins Thursday, runs through April 4. In addition, several post-festival events are scheduled for the week of April 10, while the Tunes & Balloons event has been pushed back to September in large part because of weather concerns.

No matter the changes, Ferro said the festival brings residents and visitors together.

“It’s got a lot of love, beauty, friendship,” he said. “It’s an iconic thing, and it’s economic engine. It generates $5 (million) to $7 million of economic impact for Middle Georgia.”

Ferro said he would love to exceed $10 million “at some point.”

The key, he said, is “not to lose sight of who we are.”

“It’s all about the cherry blossoms,” he said, “but it’s also about what pulls our community together that’s important.”

This story was originally published March 15, 2015 at 9:36 PM with the headline "Cherry Blossom leader wants to keep festival fresh, growing ."