Dublin International Film Festival Drives Engagement with PageRaft
Challenge
Facing implications from COVID-19, Dublin International Film Festival organizers were faced with uncertainty around whether the festival would be forced to go virtual, hybrid, or fully in person. On top of that, the festival had been around since 2005 and was due for a bit of reinvention to attract new audiences. In addition to those issues, logistical challenges and supply chain problems with paper stock made getting printed programs very expensive and a risky bet.
Solution
The Director of Marketing for the DIFF, Vic Kumar knew that to reinvigorate the event guide and drive engagement with younger audiences, he needed more than a traditional flipbook. That’s when he found Nxtbook’s PageRaft platform. As it happened, the film festival’s lead sponsor, Virgin Media, also used the platform for its own marketing campaigns and provided a recommendation to use it. He talks through the experience in the interview below.
Benefits
- Data showed an 18.1 percent increase in new customers in the target 18-24 demographic.
- An increase of more than 16 times engagement versus the estimated printed readership.
- An immersive digital experience that more fully represents showcased films, beyond the traditional static picture and synopsis that print is limited to.
- Teams saved thousands of dollars and reduced uncertainty versus printing traditional programs.
- Lead time for program design was greatly reduced without the need for printing.
Key Quotes
“The digital campaign showed that 18.1 percent were new customers and they were in that 18-24 bracket which was one of the targets. So that 18.1 percent is huge because normally trying to recruit new audiences is a) very expensive and b) you’d be lucky to get between five and 10 percent. So, the results were phenomenal.”
“The data proved that people interacted with it very well. With 337, 000 page loads is huge versus an estimated readership of 21,000 (for printed event guides). And our dwell time was great.”
“I wanted something that was digital, that was interactive, that could showcase (more than a still image and a synopsis); It could also drive traffic to the point of sale. It could also give me data, particularly on which genres were the most viewed, and it was mobile-centric.”
“This is infinitely better than any website.”
Vic Kumar, Director of Marketing, Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival
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