Embracing the modern campaign: A digital transformation

In today's marketing landscape, most campaign conversions happen in the digital space. Audiences encounter campaigns multiple times across various platforms before converting, reflecting a more flexible and fragmented campaign structure. This modern approach of targeted, focused advertising is essential, especially when encapsulating something as diverse as The Edinburgh Festival Fringe into a single campaign.

A Multidimensional Festival Experience

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is a vast, eclectic mix of performances. As you navigate the festival, you might watch an up and coming comedian, encounter a fire-breathing street performer, be awed by theatre, and then find yourself at an operatic history performance. Our campaign needed to hero each genre without prioritising one over the other, creating a mosaic of experiences for each unique community.

Crafting the 2024 Campaign

For the 2024 campaign as we worked with the team at the Fringe Society; we dropped some ideas, merged others and eventually refined the concepts down into the campaign you have (hopefully) seen. The need to create a flexible campaign that brings the die-hard fans of the festival along while opening it up to younger audiences as well. Led us to a 3D approach.

Creatively setting a new tone for a modern Fringe, that allows the assets to be flexible for every format.

All the objects can come together in a YouTube ad, filling the screen with energy and drawing people into the entire fringe. While also working for when we want to focus on a genre specifically such as music. Pulling in those objects and grabbing the super fans of melody as they get served ads across social and display formats.

With twelve key genres as well as everything else that makes up the festival, quickly a list of 35 objects appeared. Each one is treated as a miniature clay version of the real deal. Bringing back the craft and humanity of the Fringe. Rather than the clean perfect plastic that is often seen in 3D renders.

Depending on your technical interest in such modern marvels as 3D modelling. Your first thought might be “how do you create a tiny clay food truck?” The answer to that is Blender. By starting with basic shapes you can slowly build up the structure and then work in the details. Rounding the corners and edges to build in the idea of something at the small scale we want to create. From there it’s all about the shading, which is effectively the material you add to an object. The material is what makes a grey shape look like wood, glass or clay.

Repeat the process 35 times and a campaign can start to really come off the screen. Exporting them as flat assets for print. Bringing them all together to create the programme cover, or selecting just a few for the social adverts talking to cabaret fans. It’s this flexibility across formats that makes me excited by a 3D campaign. You are not limited by what you can find on a stock imagery library. Neither by the format itself when you need to add motion in for social channels. Much harder to do with a static format like a JPEG.

With this approach, we produced over 100 dynamic creative optimizations (DCOs), allowing us to tailor our ads to different audience segments more precisely. This extensive set of assets ensures that each ad feels personalised and relevant to the viewer, significantly enhancing engagement and conversion rates.

Moving Beyond Traditional Assets

While many understand this new campaign approach, some agencies still cling to the "trophy asset"—the indulgent 90-second TV spot or the glossy programme cover. Historically, these assets were the pinnacle of a campaign, but their relevance is waning. Today, people often reach for their phones during TV ads, and those who see the programme cover are likely already at the event.

Digital Assets at the Campaign's Heart

There are great examples of work out there creating a new normal. Placing digital assets at the heart of the campaign and reaping the rewards or having a more direct and specific story to tell each person seeing it. Targeted ads do not have to be at the expense of creativity or story. In the new age of big data and KPIs which hold campaigns to account, we can all still make enjoyable moments. It just requires a different mindset, not an obsession with one hero asset that you will be able to write home about. The campaign will exist in parts across the ether, never seen by anyone in its entirety. Except you and anyone who sees your case study.

Results so far

So far the organic and inorganic campaign has yielded impressive results; since April it’s managed to generate over 3,000,000 impressions, and £300,000 worth of revenue with a ROAS of 3406%. Monthly performance has consistently improved, with July alone seeing a staggering ROAS of 4797%. Showing not just campaign reach, but effectiveness in converting awareness to sales.

The social media ads have performed exceptionally well, particularly the circus feed ad, which achieved a CTR of 0.78% and a CPA of £9.69, effectively capturing and converting. The music feed ad also demonstrated strong results with a CTR of 0.74% and a CPA of £7.54. YouTube campaigns created high levels of engagement with 30% of users watching midway, and 17% of users watching 100%. Almost half of YouTube impressions are being delivered on a TV screen creating a larger impact compared to mobile or tablet.

These metrics convey the effectiveness of the pre-Fringe social media campaigns in creating awareness and driving ticket sales. We’re excited to see how they perform moving into the Fringe given the consistent increase in ROAS as the opening comes closer.

Join Us at the Fringe

As we celebrate the success of this modern, flexible campaign, we invite you to experience the magic of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe first-hand. With countless performances across a multitude of genres, there’s something for everyone. Don’t miss out on this unparalleled cultural experience. Book your tickets now and join us at the Fringe!