The Challenge
Festival of the Hills was a series of free, family events run by the Adelaide Hills Council as part of the Adelaide Fringe.
The Discover, Play, Bikeway! event saw the first-ever activation of the 15km Amy Gillett Bikeway, with a range of pop-up food, music, art and performances along the bikeway. Festival goers could choose to experience some or all of the pop-ups by foot or by bike.
As a non-ticketed event, Council had no way of tracking registrations or the public’s intentions to attend. communikate et al’s support was sought to help ensure the event was well publicised and marketed to encourage attendance.
Our Approach
A comprehensive publicity, influencer marketing, social media and content creation campaign was devised to promote the event both in the lead up and on the day.
This included:
- Pitching tailored story angles to media outlets/journalists that have an interest in the Hills and/or festivals and events
- Engaging with social media influencers that align with the Adelaide Hills Council brand to create content for their own channels that was authentic and endorsed the event
- A social media ‘take over’ where communikate et al attended the event and ran Council’s social media accounts, posting photos and videos to Facebook and Instagram as things were happening on the ground
- Camera and drone filming of the pop-ups along the bikeway, to edit into a high-quality video that can be used post-event and to promote next year’s event
The Outcome
Our integrated approach to supporting the event garnered the following outcomes:
- Media coverage across The Advertiser, ABC Radio Adelaide, 5MU/Power FM, Glam Adelaide, Kiddo Mag, Play & Go, and Kids in Adelaide, reaching hundreds of thousands of readers/listeners
- More than 530 likes, comments and shares on Facebook and Instagram posts from the social media ‘takeover’
- Two feed posts and five stories on Instagram by influencers with a combined audience of 37,000 followers
- A 60-second video shared via social media and the Council’s website, to highlight the events success, which can be easily re-edited as a promotional video for the 2022 event
After the event format’s success, Council decided to run it again in 2022.
Jennifer Blake, Adelaide Hills Council’s Communications, Engagement and Events Manager, said “we were really happy with the event and the work communikate et al did for us. Henry and his team were brilliant on Sunday and Ben has smashed out some good PR results. The influencer campaign also worked well.”
