Celebration of Light website
Celebration of Light website
The Celebration of Light first came to us because they were at risk of not being able to afford running the annual the Vancouver fireworks festival. Without a solid base of community supporters, and in an economic downturn, sponsors could not justify paying for the event which relied heavily on outdoor and print campaigns in years past. The event was expected to be held in a month and the organization wanted a website to bring it all together, for a huge audience (all of Vancouver), on a very tight budget.
Knowing that search engines can take weeks to crawl website pages organically, and their budget would be more efficiently used elsewhere, we advised them to build a basic micro-site and to pool most of their energy into a social media campaign. In parallel with building the microsite, we developed a social media plan to identify key influencers, galvanize support and foster cause recruitment. We established the platforms, including a Flickr account, Facebook group and a Wordpress based website, to reach out and engage social influencers to:
- promote conversation
- support the event
- take action to demonstrate support to potential sponsors.
By integrating social media platform with the site, we leveraged their existing assets to reach Vancouverites where they were spending their time online. Amalgamating social network assets and feeds also had the benefit of allowing us to accumulate data on the people who supported the event. This information was used to appeal to potential sponsors who were looking for brand exposure to these market segments and to showcase the importance of the event itself to the community.
We planned and delivered a comprehensive social media solution and micro-site that would help achieve their goals more effectively than just building a website. And it worked. HSBC came on board as principal sponsor, engaging with a new pool of community-oriented customers, and the Celebration of Light went ahead.
- Total Facebook group membership reached 33,000.
- Twitter followers reached 250 during the first 4 weeks of the campaign.
- Average daily unique visits for the duration of the 4 weeks after we launched was 3,450.
- The first week daily numbers averaged 11,500; the first day was 24,500.
By linking the needs of the sponsors with those of the community, focusing on low-cost and easy-to-implement ideas, we were able to grow a meaningful network of support for the community event.