So the weekend’s over and we had a blast at the Famously Hot Music Festival! This project was so much fun to be a part of. The Famously Hot Music Festival was a three-day music festival featuring a different genre of music each day in downtown Columbia, SC. The line-up included Collective Soul, Buckcherry, Filter, Seven Mary Three, Eve 6, EOTO, Savoy, Eliot Lipp, Lonestar, Pat Green, Corey Smith and Julie Roberts. Red to Gray worked with Dave Stewart/SS Productions to create an identity package, website, promotional materials including posters and postcards, advertising, merchandise, festival collateral, stage scrims and signage. We also provided media assistance, social media management and analytics analysis.
The official marketing campaign meme for the Columbia Visitor’s Bureau is “Columbia – Famously Hot” developed by ADCO. The festival organizer wanted to use “Famously Hot” as the theme to create some consistency with other like-named events that happen throughout the year. We wanted to create a logo that would work for different genres of music but represent a progressive music festival. The logo above was created in conjunction with the iconic logo to the right to establish the identity but provide flexibility for all of the pieces that have to be created for a project this size.
The process began in late May 2012 and the festival ran Friday, August 24th – Sunday, August 26th so we had to move pretty quick. We worked on the identity package first and then developed the web presence including social media. Next came the advertising and posters. We finished off by developing the merchandise, festival collateral, stage scrims and signage.
The social media and analytics components were used extensively to communicate key messages and to evaluate the effectiveness of certain marketing efforts including print, radio and television advertising. Social media including Twitter and Facebook was used on the days of the festival to communicate with festival-goers and the artists performing. By the end of the festival we had grown our Facebook “Reach” to over 170,000 and over 1500 likes.
