The Brief
Summer in the City is the UK’s largest YouTube and online video festival. The event is for everyone with an interest in online video, whether they be creators, viewers, or industry professionals. This year is their tenth year and set to be the biggest.
The target audience is traditionally pre-teen and early to mid teenagers, and their parents. The brief was to both sell tickets to the end consumers and also drive sponsorships and commercial partnerships
The Strategy
Summer in the City partnered with The Big Shot, who ideated and lead a digital first strategy to use content strands that could be adapted and used across multiple channels.
Firstly, a B2B brand campaign using marketing press and LinkedIn ads developed a number of marketing leads from target brands. This was underpinned with a co-branded email sent to a number of marketing databases.
The consumer campaign used a suite of content assets made up of existing footage from previous years and assets from the creators and their management team.
The first content strand was called ‘Creator Confirmed’ which focused on promoting the appearances of the lead creators. This encompassed a series of videos and gifs the fans of the various creators appearing at the show with a view to mobilising them to the ticket site.
In addition to the ‘creator confirmed’ content strand, there was a series of digital campaigns to target vertical audiences around the key stages and themes – the gaming stage, the fashion stage, and parenting. This was with a view to reaching new audiences.
The digital content campaign that was underpinned with paid-social activity also acted as a spring board for some broadcast PR which placed some of the leading creators and influencers appearing at the event across programming to reach both consumer and B2B audiences, such as Sky News.
Results
So far, this year’s SitC is on target to sell tickets for the three day event and the B2B campaign to identify and deliver meetings and sponsorships for the SitC event is well underway. In addition, the first day of the event, Creator Day, has seen huge interest from both marketing and creator audiences.
“The Big Shot were the obvious choice to lead this campaign. They have a heritage of working with and understanding youth audiences and creators. What was refreshing was that they understand the commercial necessities of a campaign and whilst being creative, they saw the need to drive ticket or sponsorship sales.” Tom Burns, Founder of Summer In The City