Festival Campaign

Marketing Campaign for the East Greenwich Community Festivals The East Greenwich Community Festivals programme was initiated in 2011 by a group of local residents in collaboration with Stream Arts, the creative production charity that brings together innovative, location-specific, art practice and local people through playful experiences.  Collectively, their vision was to create an Olympic-inspired legacy of community cohesion, achieved by developing a summer programme of fun and celebratory events. Inspiring individuals, community groups, local businesses and larger organisations to participate in the Festivals and deliver a diverse programme of free summer events, where the whole community could come together to have some fun.  In addition, the project aimed to raise sufficient funds to invest in a local environmental improvement project by way of creating a permanent physical legacy. As the diverse programme of events took shape, the signature event was billed as a weekend-long1948 themed Festival Fête, hosted in the historic East Greenwich Pleasaunce and scheduled for the mid weekend of the Olympic Games in August 2012. The 1948 theme had been chosen since it was the year in which the last Olympics took place in London.  With the programme of events complete, Lorraine was asked to develop and deploy a marketing strategy over a 12 month period to promote the event programme to partners, investors and festival-goers.  Key elements of the marketing plan included: Developing the East Greenwich Community Festivals brand Listing the events with online media channels Setting up various social media accounts including a Facebook Page, Twitter and appealing hashtag Identifying potential partners Developing the EGCF Get involved! brand and campaign to attract partners Writing numerous press releases for local media and bloggers Developing the EGCF Come along! brand and campaign to attract festival-goers Devised distribution plan for flyers and posters Planned and negotiated advertising packages with local media and Facebook Arranged event broadcasting through social media channels to create online engagement around the daily events which included engagement hooks such as using vintage iPhonography to broadcast pics with a 1940s feel, running hashtag competitions for best photo and best comment, answering visitor queries and having numerous tweets with radio, businesses, councillors and local residents. Encouraged local press to attend the festival to encourage reportage which can be used in support of future funding requests. Testimonial: Lorraine has executed a terrific marketing plan which has resulted in the inaugural 2012 programme of the East Greenwich Community Festivals being a huge success!  The effective engagement of social media specialists to promote the live events was visionary and we hope that the value our festival created for the borough's 'Visit Greenwich' brand will encourage the Council to support the EGCF in the years to come. We now hope to capitalise on all of the newly built relationships to evolve the brand developed by Lorraine and her team. Particularly remarkable were the online results achieved at the 1948 Fête Finale which included 250,000 impressions on our #EGCFest hashtag with over 81,000 unique followers reached - that's not to mention the many hundreds of happy festival go-ers who enjoyed a fantastic weekend full of 1948 craziness!. Rob McNeill, Artistic Director, Stream Arts www.streamarts.org.uk/projects