B. PHL Innovation Fest

Challenge

Philadelphia is known for many things, but according to a Brookings Report, innovation was not one of them. Leaders responded by coming together to create B. PHL Innovation Fest, the first and only innovation festival in Philadelphia that was to be held October 15–17, 2019. Slice Communications was brought in to develop and execute a social media strategy that would generate awareness and drive attendees to the over 100 events that were part of the festival.

Insight

To start, we first developed a social media strategy that encompassed the entirety of the festival, broken down into two primary phases: the first focused on generating awareness around the festival, while the second was around driving traffic and building excitement for the speakers and programming.

Initially, our organic social media efforts focused on sharing general information around B. PHL. Closer to the event, posting frequency increased, and efforts included more information around the event and speakers. Additionally, we brainstormed and executed several social campaigns in order to use social in the best ways possible. First, we developed custom speaker graphic templates in order to promote speakers in a clearly branded and shareable way. Second, we had speakers submit videos answering the question “What Innovation Means to You.” These videos helped highlight the original intention of the event – the value of innovation in the City of Philadelphia.

For paid social, our efforts were broken into two distinct objectives over two phases. The first phase objective was to generate brand awareness for the festival itself. These ads targeted a more general audience in order to attract a diverse range of individuals. The second phase of ads aimed to drive traffic to the website in order to garner registrations. To do so, Slice created granular target audiences to reach specific interests of potential attendees. There were a total of 46 ad sets with each ad set targeting specific tracks of the festival: business, art, science, technology, healthcare, social impact, and more. In the same phase, Slice’s ads also highlighted the high profile speakers to encourage ticket sales, each with their own custom audience. Over time, we optimized the ads to remove any underperforming geo-targeted locations in order to direct more budget towards the successful ads.

The day of the event, we created graphics that highlighted the festival schedule. Our team shared these posts every hour so attendees could easily plan where they needed to be. Additionally, our team attended the festival to share takeaways from events across the city in real time. Our social team also interacted with individuals who were using the branded #BPHLFest hashtag by engaging with their posts and resharing when necessary. Slice utilized this user-generated-content to create instagram highlights that showcased each day of the festival.

Success

On the first day of the event, #BPHLFest became the number one trending hashtag in the Philadelphia region. Additionally, keynote speaker Tracee Ellis Ross posted about the festival on her Instagram, which provided a boost in engagement and interest. For the entire engagement, we were able to generate over one million impressions, along with 51,942 engagements and 4,093 link clicks.