Helping festivals grow year on year

Bolster has been the digital marketing and creative agency for the St Jerome’s Laneway Festival for the past five years.

Laneway is one of Australia’s largest festivals, attracting thousands of young Australians to unique locations across five cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane.

Since 2016, we have helped them consistently sell 60,000+ tickets a year, grow their digital presence, and turn their socials into an always-on platform by launching custom publication LNWY.co in 2017.

In 2020, Laneway set us the challenge of increased capacity across their national run of five shows. Laneway sold out three out of five locations and saw a 33% increase in ticket sales.

Part of the reason for that was the diversity of our ad spend. We spent across Facebook Ecosystem, Google Ecosystem (Search, YouTube), WeChat, Weibo, Snapchat, SoundCloud, Spotify, AdRoll and Twitch, seeing a 25% increase in conversions. Our digital strategy played a significant role in the festival’s biggest year yet.

Our content team also took a conceptual approach to Laneway’s 2020 wrap video.

Viewing data was telling us audiences had become fatigued by the typical hype reel format, so we needed a concept that would engage viewers and pop out in newsfeeds.

Drawing upon the nostalgia of watching TV in the 90’s, we created a dynamic festival hype reel that integrated all the key verticals of the festival – from music to fashion and food. The 2020 Laneway hype reel was viewed by 40,000+ people across socials, with hundreds of positive engagements with the brand.