Meet Ben Bass! He’s one of the Promotions Directors for Mayfest and he’s been working really hard to reveal each artist and promote Dillo Day in a creative way!
Age: 20
Hometown: New York, NY
Major: Radio, Television, and Film; Integrated Marketing Communications Certificate
1. Who has been your all-time favorite Dillo day artist?
Chance the Rapper’s Dillo Day set in 2014 was definitely my favorite Dillo Day set so far. I still think about it all the time. I remember he was just starting to really blow up at that point, and everyone right from the beginning of the year was saying that we just had to get Chance to come to Dillo that year. He was the first artist we announced and everyone was so excited. It was my first Dillo Day and I had no idea what to expect, and then to watch Chance give such a high energy performance on the Lakefill when it was so beautiful and sunny out was definitely one of my top experiences at Northwestern. I think it was the second time he ever played “Wonderful Everyday: Arthur” in front of a live audience, and that song had just started to go viral online. Everyone was so into it. I just remember everyone watching his set and saying “wow, he’s gonna be huge soon.” It was pretty surreal.
2. If you could have anyone perform at Dillo who would it be?
This is funny because there’s a big difference between who I would want to come to play Dillo Day and who would actually be a great fantasy performer. In the realm of impossibility, of course I’d love to see someone huge like Beyoncé or Drake. What a lot of people don’t know is that Kendrick Lamar actually played Dillo Day in 2012 before he became so popular. Apparently barely anyone went, which is crazy. It would be so cool to see him come play now. On a personal note, I may or may not have seen Billy Joel live in concert roughly five times, and I may or may not have tickets to see him again this June.
3. What’s your position on Mayfest and what have you done so far in preparation for this year’s Dillo?
This year, I’m one of the two Co-Directors of Promotions for Mayfest. With the rest of the promo team, we do everything from artist announcements to designing the merchandise, making the website, running all of our social media accounts, coordinating festival credentials, making the Dillo Day app, spreading the word about all our events like Battle of the Bands, Battle of the DJs, and Mayhem, and advertising anything and everything about Dillo Day that the university and our corporate sponsors want us to promote to everyone who comes to Dillo Day. When you look at everything we have to do, it’s a ton of work, but there are some insanely talented people on promo and it’s such a fun job.
4. As the promotions director, if you had unlimited resources, what would be your ideal method for promoting Dillo Day?
This is tough, because we have some big ideas on Promo. One literally big idea we had was to get a blimp. We went as far as looking into blimp vendors and getting quotes for a blimp to fly over campus and flash an artist’s name. It didn’t end up happening for a multitude of reasons, which was definitely a bummer. We also looked into trying to spell out an artist’s name in fireworks. Still unsure why that didn’t end up working out.
5. Tell us a story about an interaction you’ve had with a celebrity.
I actually haven’t interacted much with any past Dillo Day artists, but one time I bumped into Amy Schumer in an office setting and it caught me so off guard that I was completely unprofessional about it. I made eye contact with her and the only thing I could think to do in the moment was just audibly gasp really loudly and keep walking. Everyone she was with thought I was so lame since I couldn’t keep my composure and some of them laughed at me, and as I tried to hide in shame around the corner she made some joke about me to everyone she was with before walking into an office.
6. You seem to be interested in pop culture because you’re in both A&O and Mayfest. What would your ideal job be?
I’d love to work in TV and Entertainment. I don’t know exactly what that’ll end up looking like, but helping out in the creative aspects of producing people’s favorite shows is definitely something I hope I can end up doing in some capacity.
Photos of Ben from Facebook