Context
Kings Place’s fourth annual festival featured their unique formula of 100 events in just four days, ranging from classical, folk and jazz concerts to free family events, cookery demonstrations and wine tasting. The festival aims to showcase the wide range of events which take place throughout the year at Kings Place, opening them up to a more diverse audience with ticket prices as low as £4.50. This year’s festival included a giant touch-sensitive dancefloor, world-class classical soloists such as Ivana Gavric and William Howard, jazz musician Robert Mitchell and a comedy night featuring Ardal O’Hanlon.
Mission and approach
An important part of our brief from Kings Place was to go beyond traditional PR methods to create unique engagement experiences for audiences that would allow the venue to build direct links with their visitors during the festival. We created, developed and executed an original interactive opportunity for visitors called King of Kings Place. We worked alongside the marketing team at Kings Place and a team of designers, artists and social media consultants to create the necessary assets for the competition. King of Kings Place encouraged visitors to ‘check-in’ using the location-based networking platform Foursquare at six different points throughout the venue, or in an offline version of the contest, collect the six printed stamps. Collection of all six gave the entrant the chance of being crowned the 'King of Kings Place'. Visitors were also encouraged to upload photographs to Facebook and Twitter to share their experiences with their friends and followers using hashtags. The highly successful competition saw hundreds of entries across the on and offline channels over the four days of the festival, with a number of visitors arriving to attend concerts and staying longer to explore the venue further.
Kings Place also engaged us to secure a wide range of coverage in publications where the festival had not been featured before. Our approach was to highlight key events within the festival, as well as promoting the unique concept as a whole. WildKat PR’s work led to more extensive coverage for the Festival than ever before, with over forty articles, interviews, previews and reviews secured in publications ranging from national newspapers and music magazines to lifestyle press such as BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour, the Big Issue and local publications. WildKat PR’s campaign saw critics from all national newspapers in attendance as well as from local publications, music magazines and more.
Achievements
Press & PR
- Previews in all major national newspapers including Financial Times weekend, The Times, Guardian and more.
- Previews across a wide range of music publications including classical, jazz and world magazines.
- Radio interviews for performers on BBC Radio 3 programmes such as In Tune and Jazz on 3, and BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour.
- Previews in local press outlets including Camden New Journal and Islington Tribune.
- Features in a wide range of lifestyle publications from in-house magazines of local estate agents to The Big Issue.
- Previews, features and reviews on over 30 websites and blogs
- Feature writers and reviewers from all national newspapers in attendance during the festival.
- Secured a ‘journalist-in-residence’ for MUSO Magazine for the duration of the festival, covering all classical events.
Creative consultancy
- Devised and launched King of Kings Place competition.
- Co-ordinated the production of the King of Kings Place promotional materials, working with designers and artists to create an eye-catching, unique visual campaign.
- Sourced a large throne, which was placed in the Kings Place entrance and encouraged visitors to upload photos to Facebook and Twitter.
- More than 300 people took part in the competition for a prize of a season pass or meal for two in the restaurant.
- Entrants ranged from 4 to 87 years old, many were visiting Kings Place for the first time and were encouraged to discover what the venue had to offer in addition to concerts.
- Worked directly with Foursquare and social media consultants to develop the King of Kings Place concept.
- Devised hashtag for Kings Place Festival that received more than 116,000 impressions over 4 days.