Event Activation | Ballina Byron Airport & Bluesfest
Ballina Byron Gateway Airport, a client of 15 years and one of the top 10 regional airports in Australia, has been Official Airport Sponsor of Australia's largest blues and roots festival since 2018.
It competes against much larger airports with far bigger marketing budgets nearby, so its strategy is to build on what only it can own: the region, and a name for warm, personal service. Until 2024 the sponsorship had run mostly as pre-event activity.
We saw the moment for real presence at the festival itself, and took on the naming rights and brand activation for the Bluesfest VIP Lounge, a first for the event.
It competes against much larger airports with far bigger marketing budgets nearby, so its strategy is to build on what only it can own: the region, and a name for warm, personal service. Until 2024 the sponsorship had run mostly as pre-event activity.
We saw the moment for real presence at the festival itself, and took on the naming rights and brand activation for the Bluesfest VIP Lounge, a first for the event.
Services
The Approach
Airports and music festivals sit worlds apart, but the two share more than they seem: a VIP lounge and an airport lounge trade on the same brand synergies and customer experience points, the welcome, the service, the sense of being looked after. That was the opening. From there we shaped the plan: bring the airport's welcome into the lounge, with people as the activation.
We recreated the touchpoints of the airport journey in the festival space, staffed by airport people and themed talent in scripted roles as cabin crew, cockpit crew and air marshals. Guests were welcomed with a VIP check-in and a boarding pass carrying the festival playlist, then guided to the stages. With no template to follow, we built the blueprint from scratch and used it to bring every part of the sponsorship together.
Results
The activation ran across the five days of Bluesfest and its 50,000-strong crowd, as part of a four-month program of pre-event communications, event activation and consumer promotions, with a team of seven running the lounge on the ground. In Bluesfest's post-festival survey, the airport's sponsor awareness rose by more than 400% on the previous year, ranking third for recall, ahead of sponsors with significantly larger budgets.
Next Project.
Airport Marketing Campaign | Virgin Australia 20-Year Anniversary
For two decades, Virgin Australia has been a key partner of Ballina Byron Gateway Airport, carrying close to 2 million passengers and establishing the Ballina-Sydney route as the 8th busiest intrastate route in Australia.
