Live at Leeds and Slam Dunk Festivals

How do we highlight the brilliance of alternative music festivals to potential visitors to increase ticket sales?

Using digital posters on arterial roads allows us to bring up-to-date messaging, with artist announcements able to be highlighted immediately.

FutureSounds Group is Yorkshire's largest live music brand and runs a number of notable music events such as Live at Leeds, Last Time Out and the Slam Dunk Festival. Slam Dunk Festival is the UK's most prestigious and critically acclaimed alternative music festival.

Slam Dunk always delivers a star-studded line-up, with previous years acts including Paramore, All Time Low, You Me at Six and Panic! at the Disco. The festival has won a number of awards including Best Festival at the Kerrang! Awards. The Festival occurs on Saturday of the late May Bank Holiday at Hatfield Park in Hertfordshire before acts perform at Temple Newsam in Leeds on the Sunday.

Live at Leeds, similarly bring an exciting line-up, with past headliners including Two Door Cinema Club, Bombay Bicycle Club and the Pigeon Detectives. The festival occurs on the Saturday of the late May Bank Holiday at Temple Newsam, with a combined ticket package available for both festivals.

The Ark Media has been involved with FutureSounds promoting the Slam Dunk Festival and Live at Leeds for several years, as well as promoting individual gigs such as Ed Sheeran at Roundhay Park and Lewis Capaldi and Dermot Kennedy's performances at the First Direct Arena.

Objectives

The primary objective of these campaigns were to

- Increase tickets sales

- Raise awareness of Leeds premier alternative music festivals showcasing original music

Streethubs have been used to drive frequency, this creative highlights a number of FutureSounds events happening across the Bank Holiday weekend.

Strategy and Execution

To maximise interest each year, we operate the campaign in two phases. An initial campaign is run in autumn of the preceding year to coincide with initial artist announcements and publicise headliners. This is then followed up in the spring before the festival to remind potential festival goers that the festival is approaching soon and to convince them to buy those tickets.

We devised a number of key sites to strategically use OOH advertising ensuring maximum reach, with 41% of 15-34 year olds seeing a large format billboard every week it offers a great opportunity to communicate with this target audience. Digital screens allow us to be flexible and adaptable, allowing Out-of-Home advertising to be responsive, meaning line-up updates can be advertised promptly and messaging can be revised quickly. 

The strategy of the numerous campaigns has included:

- Digital advertising sites including prestige sites on the M621

- Static advertising sites across Leeds in key locations

- Solus takeover of a screen at Hatfield Galleria

A Sell Out Festival

The SlamDunk and Live at Leeds Festivals remains premier music events within the alternative space. Through these campaigns, the profiles of both festivals have been raised to be key events on the calendar for alternative music fans in West Yorkshire and Hertfordshire.

By targeting commuters, we created a successful campaign which drove awareness of the great line ups to potentially interested parties across Leeds and Hatfield. Line-up messaging provides a great way to engage those waiting in traffic to see if they can spot their favourite band. Digital advertising provided a great option to keep the creative and messaging up to date with line up announcements and changes.

The Ark Media is hugely experienced across a variety of sectors, and here we proved how to get great success from a media campaign focused on an entertainment offering. We created a tailored campaign utilising high impact digital sites to suit the Future Sound Group's need for high impacts and adaptable advertising.

Digital screens on main arterial roads in Leeds, highlighting the 2023 line up (above) and the 2022 line up (below).