Challenge
The Atlanta Jazz Festival is one of the largest free jazz festivals in the country. It includes a weekend-long Festival during Memorial Day weekend and 31 Days of Jazz events in the days leading up to the festival.
The event is produced/presented by the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs (OCA) and the Festival’s mission is to expose and entertain a diverse audience of Jazz aficionados, young Jazz enthusiasts and aspiring musicians to the rich heritage and variety of Jazz as an authentic form of American music.
In 2017, the festival celebrated its 40th anniversary and was looking for a public relations agency to help reinforce the event’s monumental milestone through additional marketing, PR and digital marketing efforts and drive customer satisfaction through new innovations to reach its target audience. c21 was selected and we created a detailed plan which included a comprehensive media relations program, a social media content calendar, email marketing, website updates, grassroots marketing and the creation of a new mobile channel that would eliminate the need for a paper program and paper customer satisfaction surveys.
Through our extensive communications efforts and successes from the 40th Atlanta Jazz Festival, we were selected again in 2018, 2019 and 2020 to manage communications for the popular event.
Planning
c21 set four main objectives to maximize the marketing, PR and digital budget over three months (March – May), increase awareness of the event and its performers, and ultimately improve customer satisfaction:
- Develop a comprehensive, integrated communications plan for the 31 Days of Jazz events from May 1 – 31, and Festival Weekend, May 25 – 26
- Secure media coverage that surpassed 100 million impressions, including at least 10 broadcast/radio appearances and 25 print and/or online media and blogger stories
- Increase traffic to the Festival’s mobile app and website
- Measure customer satisfaction through a survey to continuously improve the event
Execution
We researched customer satisfaction surveys from past Festivals and formulated an integrated PR and digital marketing plan to highlight beloved parts of the Festival and address previous concerns.
The plan aimed to engage metro Atlanta residents who matched the demographics of previous festival attendees, alongside attracting new potential visitors to the event. It also targeted out-of-state music enthusiasts who may consider traveling to attend. The plan included a comprehensive media relations program, website and social media support, email marketing campaigns and the creation of a mobile channel that would put the Festival literally in the palm of Festival goers’ hands.
We worked closely with the event production team, Elk Events, and the City of Atlanta to gather information on the artist line-up to be released via press release and video from Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. We consistently distributed information to media including calendar listings of the 31 Days of Jazz, information about the Artist Market, a new market of Atlanta-based visual artists; sponsorship information; and information on the Festival’s official artwork, VIP lounge, Kid Zone and Baby Rest Stop happening during Festival Weekend.
Within four weeks, we developed and launched the Festival’s first mobile app (see section after for more details) at www.atljazzfest.com (now redirects to the main site) and had it functional in April to promote the 31 Days of Jazz events. We posted the 31 Days of Jazz events on more than 30 community and media online calendars. We then began scheduling artist interviews, acquiring their biographies, headshots and interview availability leading up to and during Festival weekend, and booked several local and regional TV and radio interviews for OCA executive director, Camille Russell Love.
We distributed email campaigns on Friday, May 24, before the Saturday Festival kick-off, which included Spotify playlists we built featuring music from the multiple artists performing each day as well as heat advisory notifications.
Prior to the event, we approved or declined media credentials via a Google webform, and during Festival weekend, c21 managed the media tent – checking in and assisting more than 40 approved, credentialed media covering the artists throughout the weekend and coordinating on-site artist interviews with local radio and TV stations, bloggers and print journalists.
We served as a live social media street team during Festival weekend, producing Instagram stories, Facebook and Twitter posts on official Atlanta Jazz Fest social platforms, and provided content to the stage emcees to promote the mobile channel, hashtags and to be on the lookout for the street team who had Festival giveaways. We monitored live social conversations and responded immediately to attendee questions.
Festival volunteers promoted the mobile app to attendees and encouraged them to take the online customer satisfaction survey contained in the app.
Mobile Channel Development
As part of our work with the Atlanta Jazz Festival, we developed a mobile-first website – that looks and acts like an app but is one-third the cost and does not take up space on an end-user’s phone.
With the cost of apps ranging from $15,000 upwards of $85,000 or more, we have found this mobile-first solution to be an excellent way to get great results for only $5,000. In addition, no coding skills are required to maintain the app – only Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Slides, and changes can be made on the fly, immediately.
Evaluation
100,000 people attended the Atlanta Jazz Festival over the two-day event, and the 31 Days of Jazz events also enjoyed record attendance. We surpassed all of our objectives.
The Festival continues to draw a very diverse crowd, with 61% Black or African American attendees and 7% Hispanic or Latinx. Attendees vary in age, with 21% of attendees 18-30 years old, 64% between 30 and 60 years old and 15% aged 60 or older. The majority of survey submissions showed more than 85% satisfaction with the event and a plan to attend again the next year.
We garnered 298,388,330 media impressions (beating our goal of 100 million by 198%), with coverage from more than 170 stories where the Atlanta Jazz Festival appeared, including more than 50 radio and television interviews/placements.
The website from April to May grew from 9,393 unique visits to 40,021 (326% increase) and had a 9.4% year over year increase in unique visits to the website (May 2018 – 36,575 to May 2019 – 40,021). Time spent on the mobile site averaged four to eight minutes versus two minutes on the main Festival website.
