Virgin Radio RedFestDXB 2018 Reaches New Heights With Innovations Curated By Done Events

by  EVENTFAQS Bureau Entertainment | March 13, 2018 | News

Virgin Radio RedFestDXB Virgin Radio Done Events

The Virgin Radio RedFestDXB 2018 took place on February 8 and 9 at the Dubai Media City Amphitheatre in Dubai. The event was executed by Done Events and the Virgin Radio programming team worked closely with Done Events to decide on the best fit artists for the music festival. The biggest hurdle for both the parties was to ensure that the artists chosen were a core representation of Virgin Radio's playlist and who could work well with the audience attending the festival. The second biggest task was that both the days of the event had to be very definitive, each reaching a slightly different demographic. 

The next step Done Events had to take was to develop a non-traditional marketing plan incorporating multiple mediums – both traditional and modern like radio, outdoor, print, cinema, digital, social media, and special partnerships with companies like Deliveroo and Instashop that would help target the key audience and sell the music festival to the most enthused listeners. Of the lot, the most important visual medium was the TVC campaign that helped promote the festival all over the GCC by letting the people take a look at and listen to the artists within the restricted time slot. Radio partnerships with stations around the GCC, India, and Indonesia are helped promote the festival as the must-attend event of the year and Dubai as a music lovers’ destination. 

Partnering with Virgin Radio, there were multiple creative executions were carried out. Contests like the School Stars talent search competition (where the winner was given a chance to perform on stage at the music festival) and RedMan, the lovable red superhero who runs around the UAE giving out artist meet and greets and tickets to the music festival was created. Finally, partnerships with social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat helped reach the social media savvy demographic of the GCC. During the festival, Virgin Radio broadcast live streams of the interviews with all the artists. 

There were several objectives that were set and met. The main goal was to attract a larger-than-ever-before crowd over two days. The team successfully managed to have an audience of 25,000 across the two days - the largest audience that the festival has seen in its 5-year existence. The second key objective for the festival was to have additional access to the artists performing and this was achieved by the ability to film artists on stage during their performance and release videos of the performances while the artists were still on stage. This was extremely important as through this initiative, the untapped audience was also brought on board for the second day and the future iterations of the festival. 

Another key area was to create additional partnerships and promote the event through different channels that were a repeat of the previous year. Deliveroo and Instashop were key in making this happen and assist in reaching a new audience or a similar target demographic via these partnerships. A big objective for the sales team was to get a headline sponsor for the festival. The team successfully brought on Virgin Mobile on board - a virtually perfect fit due to the colour scheme, the brand name and overall core values. 

One of the main challenges was to position the festival and Virgin Radio as a key player in the market to artist management in order to secure the ability to live stream interviews and film content on stage. Through samples of previous work, videos filmed of artists, interviews conducted by Virgin Radio presenters, quality of videos edited by the production company on site and the reach that the Radio Station and RedFestDXB's social media, the target was achieved. 

Another big hurdle was to make sure that Virgin Mobile saw the benefit of being a headline sponsor of the festival. Special concepts were created to make sure that they received additional elements both in the lead up to the festival and on-ground at the event in comparison to other sponsors. A large allocation of tickets was given to Virgin Mobile to reward their customers and allow them to attend a very special private artist experience at Vox Cinemas with Bebe Rexha and Craig David (two of the key festival acts). RedMan was another great example of rewarding Virgin Mobile customers - those that found the character and were a Virgin Mobile customer automatically got their tickets upgraded to Front Pit Category. On-ground, Virgin Mobile customers were able to enter the venue ahead of anyone else through a separate line, by proving that they were a Virgin Mobile customer. In addition, Virgin Mobile customers attending the event got randomly surprised with phone calls throughout the event and upgraded to "the best seat in the house" and given the opportunity to meet and greet their favourite artists. On another note, the first day of the event experienced crowds larger than ever before and certain attendees had to wait in line for an extended period of time before they were able to enter the venue. In order to solve this, the two entrances were split into various ticket categories that allowed people to enter in an easier manner and solved the issue of waiting in line. 

The event grew in all areas - sponsorships, number of people attending, partnerships and social media reach. One of the key activities for the event this year was partnerships with social media outlets like Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram. Snapchat had a regional story from all the content that was posted to it from the festival. Special festival filters were created and areas were geofenced in order to allow people to post to the story. This content was then curated and anyone in the region with a Snapchat account was able to see a summary of the day from content posted by those attending the festival. Certain artists accounts were also highlighted which showed the festival experience through the eyes of the artists performing. Facebook and Instagram were also on board and promoted the live streamed interview content to the region as a must watch video. Via these two means, Done Events was able to reach a newer audience and hope that this would drive interest for future years.