Raising the profile of the 'Walk In The Park' festival, 2011

Client:		Organising committee, 'Walk In The Park' festival, 2011
PR Team:		Red Alert Media
Campaign:		To raise the profile of a local event, and turn it into one of THE local events in the area
Timescale:		February to July, 2011

Walk in the Park is an annual festival, organised by Wootton and East Hunsbury Parish Council. It began in 2005, and has established itself as a permanent fixture on the annual calendar ever since. The event takes place on a Friday evening, where visitors pay for admission, and from Noon on the Saturday, when admission is free. Friday is the high profile night, with top name artists performing, Saturday is a chance for local acts to make a name for themselves, and lots of subsidiary events and attractions going on around and about the main stages.

The event has grown each year, and in 2011 an ambitious new organising committee was appointed to take the event to a higher level, and make it an even better two day celebration for local people, but also for visitors from around and about Northampton, and indeed Northamptonshire.

Red Alert Media had first been asked to give the organisers some advice in the countdown to the 2010 event, when organisers were worried about lack of publicity and awareness, and immediately organised some local Press interviews to flag it up. On the strength of that, we were asked to do a proper job to publicise and promote the 2011 festival – coming on board five months before the event, and for a month afterwards.

Objectives

To make sure as many local people as possible knew about this great weekend festival, and boost both interest and ticket sales. The PR strategy was based around the local media, but having been largely ignored in the past, the Red Alert Media brief was to raise the profile of the event as one of the “must attends” in and around Northamptonshire.

Strategy and plan

Red Alert Media hit the ground running with an immediate PR opportunity, as the organising committee handed over a cheque to charity from the proceeds of the 2010 Walk In The Park festival.

Thereafter, there was a concerted ‘Game Plan’ put in place to make sure that no PR opportunity was lost. We sort out interesting stories about volunteers, the organising committee, follow ups from the previous year, good news stories about the work of the Parish Council in putting this event on, and any other relevant issue that was worth pursuing.

With the organising committee, we invited the local BBC radio station to become our media partner – offering them regular stories and guests, without a guarantee of exclusivity, in return for their brand and presence around the event over both days.

Most importantly, there was an impressive ‘wish list’ of acts being lined up by the organising committee for the Friday night – when visitors paid for entrance. The list included something for everyone: From the 1970s there was The Real Thing; From the 80s: Curiosity Killed The Cat; from the 1990s/2000s: S-Club, and for the younger audience, Diva Fever, one of the star acts from the 2010 X-Factor series.

As each act confirmed their appearance, a PR campaign was launched to mark it, but we staggered it out so that we could get good PR from as many acts as possible. Confirmation of S-Club earned us a front page lead in one local paper! Real Thing and Diva Fever both won us a high profile page lead, and while Curiosity Killed The Cat might not be as high profile, we still got a good hit from the announcement.

Thereafter, it was a case of organising, and offering, interviews with some of the acts to the local media. There were regular updates on the progress being made by the organising committee. And there continued to be some nice local PR, such as the heats of a local talent contest, with the contestants all aiming to make it to the final, which is held on the Saturday of the event itself.

The 2010 local talent contest winner was handed the chance to perform on the Friday night with the star acts, and there was local PR done around that, with the Red Alert Media team doing our own interview with her, and giving it to the local media.

That interview was part of the “Final Countdown”, our big push in the month leading up to the event. Every week we sent the local media a “10 Things About…” one of the star acts who were appearing on the Family Friday Night. We sent letters to local media, published on their letters pages, inviting local people to come and join us, achieved high profile on local community websites and Parish magazines.

BBC Radio Northampton were fantastic. We supplied a number of interesting interviewees to go and talk about the event, and they supplied presenters to host our Family Friday, and were proactive over both days.

We also, it should be pointed out, had a Crisis Management plan in place, in the event of anything not going to plan, both for the build up, and for the weekend itself.
  
Measurement and evaluation

The 2010 Walk In The Park festival attracted just under 3,000 on the Family Friday Night. This year we welcomed just over 5,000! All in all, 15,000 people passed through the gates over 24 hours, and the Police made just four arrests, which was a tribute to the security team and the organisers, who played a blinder.

We had regular publicity in the local newspapers, on local radio and on various local websites, throughout the countdown to the event, achieving front page leads and high profile placing of stories related to the event. None of it was negative.

The local newspaper – The Chronicle & Echo – did a special pull-out around the event on the Monday evening, the first time they had ever done that. Radio Northampton broadcast live from the event on both Friday and Saturday, again, the first time they had done so.

Yes, there were a few “little local difficulties”, which were the result of the organisers being victims of their own success. Not in their wildest dreams were they expecting over 5,000 people to turn up on the Friday evening, and therefore under-estimated the number of portable toilets and amount of alcohol they ordered. The organising committee issued both a statement to acknowledge one or two logistical problems, but all in all the feedback was 95 per cent positive, and five per cent negative. The organisers are largely respected for actually putting the event on, and for the hard work needed to do so, and all opinions – positive and negative – have been welcomed and responded to.

The event made a profit for the first time (in other words, it didn’t cost the taxpayer a penny), local sponsors now want to support the event, and plans are already afoot for another great weekend in 2012.

Said chairman of the organising committee, Brandon Eldred: “We had used a PR company once before but didn’t really get much out of it. But we were impressed with the advice we were given before the 2010 event, and many people had told us about the fantastic job Red Alert Media had done with promoting the Panto in Northampton.

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