After working with ChooseATL for over a year, helping them to execute an award-winning campaign at South by Southwest (SXSW) 2016, the client challenged us to go bigger and bolder for SXSW 2017. This time, ARPR had just two months to prepare for a three-day activation to showcase the hustle and hospitality of Atlanta’s industries and people. In order to amplify ChooseATL’s mission and presence at SXSW, the premier annual event for music, film & interactive media, ARPR was specifically enlisted to execute a comprehensive organic and paid social media campaign before, during and after the festival. The client’s objectives were three-fold: 1) to elevate Atlanta’s brand reputation among millennial audiences, 2) to create buzz among influencers, thought leaders and media 3) to drive attendance to Atlanta’s booths at the SXSW Job Market and the ChooseATL House.
With 90k people attending SXSW annually, ARPR recommended an engaging and creative social strategy, including:
Social Media Ads Across 5 Channels:
ARPR created a social ad theme that played off of social media itself, specifically the “trending sections” that appear on social channels and help to notify users of the hot, most talked about topics of the day. The ad’s look and feel mimicked these sections to make it appear as if ChooseATL’s events at SXSW were trending topics. With an ad budget to support ads on five channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat), ARPR had the flexibility to tailor content based on audience. For example, on LinkedIn the team promoted the Job Market booth and ChooseATL events related to career opportunities, while Twitter boasted website click and awareness campaigns for events related to film and music. Instagram had highly-visual ads promoting the ChooseATL House in general. On Snapchat, the team implemented a custom geofilter that ran during the day of programming. ARPR monitored all ads daily and adjusted budget and targeting as needed to ensure optimized performance throughout the campaigns.
Organic Social Media:
Utilizing appropriate hashtags for SXSW events and conference sessions, ARPR created organic, preplanned content for all of ChooseATL’s social platforms, updated all cover photos to match the activation branding and changed profile bio links to ChooseATL’s SXSW landing page. Social content ran before, during and after SXSW and focused on promoting Atlanta’s industries and economic impact, as well as ChooseATL’s SXSW activation and its Job Market booth. In addition to preplanned content, ARPR created and distributed real-time content on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram, including photos, videos, livestreams and real-time conversations.