HBMF: Hastings Beer & Music Festival
HBMF (The Hastings Beer and Music Festival) is an annual event held the first weekend of July which has been running for over 40 years celebrating local music and beer. It has grown over the years amassing an audience of nearly 10,000 over the course of the 3 days. It has established itself as a local favourite.
One of Dean’s personal missions was to bring his skills and expertise for campaign marketing to local organisations. That said, joining Hastings Round Table, the charity behind HBMF has been the perfect combination of fundraising, helping local causes while being part of a team to help organise one of the biggest events in Hastings.
What we did
First and foremost, we created the campaign strategy of HBMF 2024 focused on a 3 year plan. We launched the event early, around Black Friday (November) which gave us the opportunity for people to save the date in their calendars for the following year.. The next phase was to increase the awareness and engagement outside of the local area warming up the social media channel. The 3 main challenges we were looking to tackle for year 1 was:
- HBMF is a charity fundraiser. Engage and partner with other local events
- Increase the engagement and exposure across the south east
- Comedy and Friday night can be as popular as the Saturday night
New branding for each of the nights
We chose to brand each of the nights to give a clear, distinctive theme and therefore appealing to different target audiences. After reviewing the data, we identified the target audience for the Friday night was different to that of the Saturday but in previous years treated them as one.
Thursday – Comedy Night
Friday – Ibiza Anthems
Saturday – Headliners of Headliners
Social Media Strategy
Keeping on top of the strategy is making a conscious, noted effort of the entire user journey. From the social media posts, email marketing, printed content and ticket sales we created a bespoke campaign monitoring tool (more details to be added soon)
HBMF is a charity fundraiser
The team behind HBMF are a dedicated group of volunteers all with the same aim of creating a festival enjoyed by all while making money which helps Hastings Round Table to help local causes. We created a Linked In page to concentrate communication focused to these efforts while the other social media channels are there to encourage ticket sales.