A California-inspired block party for a legendary footwear brand

Our sister agency Aeroplane has managed commercial partnerships for St Jerome’s Laneway Festival since 2019, with Bolster lending digital, creative and strategic support.

Aiming to deliver better ROI outcomes for brands activating at the event itself, we developed a holistic brand activation model that didn’t just speak to the audience on ground, but created digital touchpoints before, during and after Laneway.

For PUMA, we delivered a custom built ‘Block Party’ activation in Melbourne and Brisbane that drew on inspirations from 1980s California as a nod to the newly launched Cali and Future Rider shoe designs. The activation aimed to be impactful, immersive, imaginative and add value to a festival goer’s Laneway experience.

A key feature of the activation was an oversized Puma Cali, which doubled as a stage for performers, as well as a holographic dance floor and high rise stage fit out with lighting design that morphed from day to night seamlessly.

It was all tied together through thoughtful music programming: an exclusive PUMA line-up featuring A Love Supreme DJs, Allysha Joy, Strictly Vinyl and Quartz Pistol.

In Sydney, we rolled out a pop-up activation that provided some extended brand recognition in a high foot traffic area; while in New Zealand, we initiated a PUMA a stage takeover within the existing Laneway Festival footprint.

Audience participation in NZ was solid with a base crowd of 500 people at all times, swelling to 3000 during performances of artists CC Disco and Jess B.

To round out the campaign, we created and rolled out a suite of digital assets that meaningfully leveraged Puma’s partnership with Laneway Festival and tastefully promoted the Cali and Rider lines.

In addition to animated festival awareness assets and still photography, we delivered two hero edits focussed on Laneway alumni. Melbourne artist and self-described sneaker freak Billy Davis, who spoke about how he developed his eccentric look after suffering chronic acne in his teens; and noted tennis fan Banoffee, who spoke about how fashion and art intersects in her world.

These videos achieved over 131k 3-second video views and over 114k ThruPlays (views of 15s or longer) accumulating in a large audience pool who have shown a deep engagement to Puma and Laneway content.

This engagement is further highlighted by an average watch time on content of 31 seconds.

Our hero content achieved outstanding results both organically and through a digital marketing campaign run in-house by Bolster.

This helped us build a large pool of highly engaged audiences to serve content surrounding Puma’s activity at Laneway and for future remarketing purposes.

Overall, the quality of the hero content helped amplify PUMA’s summer activity in the music space, while the Block Party was a highlight of Laneway itself, resulting in organic socials shares from festival goers and an unmissable experience on the day.