Category: Best use or integration of experiential events
Advertiser: COLLECTIVE OF MONTRÉAL FESTIVALS
Product/Service: MONTRÉAL FESTIMANIA
Agency: COSSETTE
Co-Chief Creative Officer: Antoine Bécotte (Cossette)
Chief Creative Officer: Michel De Lauw
Creative Director: Catherine Savard (Cossette)
Art Director: Jonathan Rouxel (Cossette)
Art Director: Sébastien Guy (Cossette)
Art Director: Françoise Cournoyer (Cossette)
Account Director: Pascale Chassé (Cossette)
Account Manager: Flavie Desgagné (Cossette)
Production: Jean-René Parenteau (1one)
Media placement: launch of Montreal Festimania website and social media channels, YouTube video - $15K in SEO - 23 March 2011
Media placement: YouTube video and social media channels - nonen/a - 26 May 2011
Media placement: YouTube videos and social media channels - none - 15 July 2011
Campaign Description
Since we didn't use any traditional media to broadcast content regarding the Montreal Festimania brand, and we were addressing an international target audience (France, England, the US), the national regulations applicable to Branded Content did not apply to our campaign. However, for our international stunt with Merton, our main challenge was to find locations in each city where there was enough traffic passing by, and where we were allowed to carry out the stunt according to municipal regulations in the cities chosen for the event: Paris, New York, London, and Toronto.
Effectiveness
Objective: Montreal Festimania was created in 2010, bringing together 11 different festivals held in Montreal. The objective was to increase international awareness about Montreal as a festival city in key tourist markets.
Challenge: With a tight budget for such an ambitious project, it was not reasonable to develop an entirely new identity and promote it successfully in all the markets in a traditional manner. Although Montreal is on the map, it is not as internationally recognised as cities such as New York, Paris, or London.
Target audience: young, connected people, major producers and distributors of digital content, not generally receptive to traditional tourist messages. The festival experience at Montreal Festimania could appeal to them if the message was conveyed in a highly engaging manner. Social media was the engine that drove this campaign and young people themselves were our main media influence.
Strategy: Focus on creating engaging content: the buzz for Festimania was created using word-of-mouth and free platforms integrated into our digital properties and then fed by user-generated content.
Execution: To kick-start this campaign, we used a YouTube star, Merton, a previously unknown artist who became popular with his musical improvisations on Chatroulette. An ideal choice for this campaign, he was credible with young, connected people, giving them a memorable experience and ensuring the viral effect we needed.
Communicating live with London, Paris, New York and Toronto, Merton recruited festivalgoers and gave away ‘golden lanyards’: a trip to Montreal and unlimited access to the events. A Facebook contest was created to give away an additional trip. Twitter, Foursquare and Flickr were used to generate more buzz. Other influential bloggers were invited to blog about their Festimania experience. At virtually no cost, Festimania used social media to reach out to hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
Implementation
a. An integrated digital ecosystem including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, Flickr, were all incorporated into 1 web destination: montrealfestimania.com
b. Videos produced by Merton, a YouTube star
c. Content produced by international influencers (blog posts, photos, videos, and others)
d. All the content produced was promoted through the Montreal Festimania ecosystem.
Outcome
We had $675,000 to unite all 11 festivals under a single identity and launch it at the local and international level, without any media buy, except for a minimal investment of $15,000 in SEO in order to maximise the number of search engine hits. No other initiatives contributed to the campaign results other than those mentioned above. We succeeded in standing out here in Canada and in the rest of the world with a strong identity, engaging content, and by defining a strategy to reach the target audience for Montreal Festimania.
a. Over 14m impressions in all types of media (La Presse, The Telegraph from London, Radio Canada’s 6 p.m live newscast on the night of the launch, cultural blogs, etc.)
b. 700,000 views of all the videos produced; more than 500,000 for Merton, 100,000 of which happened in the first 48 hours
c. 36 blog posts and 27 videos produced during the 4 weeks of Montreal Festimania by the 4 media influencers who were invited to attend
d. Over 9,.7m potential impressions on Twitter
e. Over 250,000 Facebook page views
f. Over 8,000 visits a month on our main digital property, montrealfestimania.com