Australia Day Council of SAPandemic adaptive campaign

The client

The Australia Day Council of SA had long been presenting outdoor events, free for the public to celebrate Australia Day. 2021 however, was going to be different and challenging due to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions to community gatherings.

In order to comply with new and ever-changing Government covid legislations, ADCSA needed to adapt their Australia Day concert event from an un-ticketed event on the Adelaide riverbank to a free ticketed event being held at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

The challenge

Our objective was to create a multi-platform campaign that would:

• • Build public awareness of Australia Day events
  • Drive traffic to event booking pages
  • Sell out event tickets

This campaign was like nothing ADCSA had ran before. Previously event goers could decide if they were going last minute, attend some or all of the event, or change their mind and not attend at all.

Our client had many apprehensions about the campaign, including the fact that having a new success metric like ticket sales meant that the campaign was more measurable making them more accountable for the success of the event.

The need to get event goers to pre-book tickets meant that we needed to define our audience to get the best results. Who was most likely to book to attend the event (and actually attend on the day) and how should we target them?

A strategic approach

We devised a multi-platform campaign targeting our defined audience through Search, Display, YouTube and Social Media. Using a combination of search keywords, audience targeting and remarketing, our objectives were:

• • Reach people searching for things to on Australia Day
  • Re-engage with people who had previously been to the website
  • Find a new audience of people who will attend the Australia Day events

Our campaign planning was being hampered by COVID at every stage. 1 month out from the event there were still issues securing a headline act due to border closures and quarantine restrictions. With no idea when this would be confirmed, we needed to have multiple plans in place to begin rolling out the campaign with the information we had at the time.