Creating Memorable Branding Experiences
Visit Victoria Creators Welcome Event for VIDCON 2019
As part of the 2019 Vidcon Conference, Visit Victoria approached ENGAGE at Disegno to activate its sponsorship of the opening “Creators Event”, which saw more than 125 of VidCon’s most talented and creative online video creators brought together for the official VIP conference launch party.
These online video creators had an average following of approximately 1 million thereby culminating in a collective audience in the multi-millions. When designing the event, we needed to consider the collective audience, as well as the creators themselves.
The Brief
THE CHALLENGE
The challenge for this activation was that essentially, the element to promote was not just the Visit Victoria brand itself, but it’s product – the whole of Victoria and more specifically, the City of Melbourne. Both tangible and intangible, its essence had to captured and elements promoted in such way that encouraged organic content creation and sharing by the Creators to their audiences, both during the event itself and across the weekend of VIDCON.
VISIT VICTORIA’S OBJECTIVES
• showcase Melbourne’s innovativeness, Instagrammable’ness and overall coolness
• provide moments and reasons for the creators to organically create content and post to their audiences
The Execution
RESEARCH AND PROCESS
THE VIDCON CREATORS
As part of responding to the brief provided by Visit Victoria, we had to undertake extensive research into each invited Creator that would be at the event, including their audience demographic. These Creators were guests invited by VIDCON to present at the conference and were from all over the world. They were selected based on their level of engagement, followers and focus. There was a large representation of a lifestyle, animation, LGBT and fashion blogs.
We had to present an event that included activations that spoke to these Creators and would encourage them to organically share with their audience, as opposed to pressured, obligatory acknowledgement. As all of the Creators were either YouTube or TikTok based, the activations had to be interactive, engaging and translate visually and acoustically via video. We watch hours of content from the Creators to ascertain what was connecting with their subscribers, what themes were being represented and what was encouraging discussion and interaction.
MELBOURNE
When we were developing the Creative Concept and Program, we knew we needed to include elements of Melbourne that were contemporary and not-oversaturated in the media. The Creators would want to show their audiences new content – content is king!
We used our knowledge of cultural offerings in Melbourne and existing network to identify a unique art installation that would speak to the city’s artistic reputation. Everything had to be a once-off or a ”first” in order to generate that organic content that the Creators search for. We identified and curated a programme that spoke to the uniqueness and the demographics of our Creators, but ensuring new practices or cutting edge offerings were included.
The Result
The Creative Concept and Brand slogan for the event was “Be More Melbourne”. It invited guests to interact with each element of the evening in order for them to “Be More Melbourne”
The event started with the Creators boarding a bus to their secret location. A guide on each bus provided interesting and unique history and pop-culture trivia around parts of the CBD they were passing, giving the Creators an insight into what makes Melbourne such a cultural melting pot. There were a lot of questions asked around the locations and content shot out of the windows.
Arriving at Fed Square and walking up one of the city’s iconic laneways, guests were greeted by the striking duo The Huxleys: A pair of huge, walking flaming lips to set the tone for the evening. They are transgressively absurd, terrifyingly amusing and inherently Melbourne – the ultimate photo-opp – dazzling and strange just made for sharing. Taken through the (constant) line at Chin Chin downstairs, guests were invited up a staircase to enter the Welcome Event, with drinks offered on arrival. Greeting them was the vivacious Max The Drag Queen (Winner: Melbourne’s Best New Talent 2019 and Winner: Miss Drag~A~Thon 2019). The Huxleys continued to roam and interact with the crowd.
The “Be More Melbourne” vending machine quickly became the place to be, with Creators finding interest and inspiration in every card – some a great spot prize! The interactive vending machine invited attendees to take part in a lucky dip of things to see and do in the Melbourne CBD. A huge selection of unique and interesting things to do and see was on offer, dispensed at the press of a button. This encouraged the Creators to not only see Melbourne via the event but also via the cards provided over their time in the city.
The interactive live art and projection piece created interest and atmosphere to the end of the room, with many guests asking questions about the activation and its mechanisms. A dynamic and interactive art meets tech installation, a live artist was painting in real-time on a real canvas. As he painted, a projection artist filmed his work, re-mixed this and then projected his interpretation of the art onto a post that guests were invited to stand in – right onto them.
SOCIAL RESULTS
• Creators’ Melbourne posts garnered 131.3K impressions, 94.k views and 38 shares with the @visitmelbourne handle getting 380 clicks
• Melbourne was also featured in an episode on the VIDCON Now channel with Kristen McAtee and Scotty Sire. It was also a destination piece on Melbourne’s Vibe
CREATOR POSTS OF THE EVENT
ACCOUNT INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS STORY POSTS
Alli Simpson 1.3M 9
Megan Dikkman 21K 2
AJ Clementine 16K 6
Neon Fiona 7K 6
Kristen Mcatee 1.4M 2
Charlee Harris 2K 3
Vidcon 370K 7
