The brief
Pulse was in its fourth year and had never sold out. The lineup was strong and expensive and it was announced in February, which meant the festival spent nine months being judged on a list of names rather than on being the festival.
How it went
- 01
Interrogate
Three years of ticket data said the same thing every year: sixty per cent of buyers had been before, and they bought within four days of the announcement. The lineup was not converting new people. It was giving returning people a reason to wait.
- 02
Position
Sell the field, not the bill. If the festival is the product, the lineup is an ingredient — and an ingredient can be announced late, on the festival’s own schedule, at a lower price.
- 03
Design
A campaign with no names in it. Type set to the tempo of the site’s own reference track, cut against four seconds of a field at 06:00. One motion rule across every asset: things arrive on the beat and leave off it.
- 04
Ignite
Tickets opened with the lineup still unannounced and the price held from the previous year. Eleven days later the festival was sold out, and the bill went up as a thank-you rather than as a sales tool.
What we made
- Campaign platform and media plan
- Motion system: one rule, twelve formats
- Announcement film and six cutdowns
- Ticketing pages and on-sale sequence
- Site, wayfinding and on-field print
What it moved
- 11
- days from on-sale to sold out
- 00
- artist names in the campaign
- 41%
- of buyers were first-timers
“We had been buying a lineup to sell tickets. It turned out we could sell the tickets and then enjoy the lineup.”
Festival Director, Pulse Festival
Credits
- Strategy
- Junia Oyelaran
- Art direction
- Marek Voss
- Motion
- Adaeze Kuti