Bringing a new audience to the blues without losing the faithful

Attracting new visitors while retaining loyal attendees is a balancing act: the campaign had to reach blues lovers and festival enthusiasts at once, audiences with very different reasons to come, and bring the focus back to the food, the community and Broadbeach itself, giving prospects a look behind the curtain of a genre with something for everyone.

An omni-channel strategy combined Meta, Google and Spotify, with original brand assets establishing Blues on Broadbeach as the Gold Coast’s must-attend event. A dedicated Spotify ad targeted listeners already deep in the genre, a festival app explainer video smoothed the attendee experience, and audience segmentation ran retargeting for previous attendees alongside a post-event FOMO campaign to keep the momentum rolling into next year.

User-generated content did the heavy lifting on authenticity: festival attendees, artists and influencers creating and sharing content that sold the community and location as much as the music, creative completely unlike anything else in market.

The campaign generated 847 leads on Meta from more than 2 million impressions, with Google paid search clicking through at 45.57%, and visitor numbers exceeded both the festival’s expectations and previous years, back past pre-Covid numbers to a record turnout.