Event Marketing Strategy by Philips Lighting [Case Study]

There is no need for introducing Philips. It is a well-known international brand with primary divisions focused in the areas of electronics, healthcare and lighting. However, you might not know how they effectively engage their fans in the online and offline environment at the same time.

Again they took part in the local event that attracts international visitors year in, year out. This time, during Carnival Sztukmistrzów (the festival of conjurers), they changed the square in the Old Town of Lublin (Poland) into illuminated, lively party zone with live music and many more attractions.

The visitors’ attention translated into over 1-million social media reach, which is an excellent result for a local event. Read more to learn about Philips strategy.

Philips Lighting at festivals

This is not the first time Philips engages fans at events they sponsor. In 2014, the brand visited Lodz, the city in the middle Poland, to participate in a 3-day event Light Move Festival. Within this short time Philips Lighting managed to boost online traffic on their social platforms, increase the number of followers by almost 1.5 thousand users and reach to almost 5 million people on the Internet!

This year Philips visited Lublin during a 4-day event that took place in July. The essence of the festival was a presentation of the widely comprehended current carnivalesque art. The carnival was the time when the whole city transformed into magical space where entire social and cultural order was turning away against 180 degree. The city was taken over by jugglers, conjurers, illusionists, fire-eaters and other street performers who entertained inhabitants and visitors with their tricks and stunts.

Philips Lighting as the strategic sponsor of the event got his own space to amuse visitors. The Philips Brothers square became a lively area where people could dance to live music, take part in competitions and other attractions. 220 dynamically illuminated umbrellas spread over people’s heads and permeating soap bubbles were the main attraction of the youngest.

Havas Media Group – Socialyse took care of the social media support. They handled Philips Social Newsroom, where online activity was supervised. On the spot, participants of the festival could see their own Instagram photos and tweets that were tagged with a dedicated hashtag.

All these actions turned out to be a whopping success.

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Social Newsroom – Philips’ command center

The team that usually supervises Philips’ social media strategy from the corporate office moved to the heart of the carnival during these few days. Social Newsroom served as a command center where all the social activities were conducted. The team produced content, interacted with Internet users online (and offline), organized competitions and encouraged participants to share their festival experiences on social media profiles. All the mentions with dedicated hashtags where collected with social listening tool and then displayed on a screen.

The scale of online promotion was massive. There were 12 digital communication platforms altogether, including 6 Fanpages, 3 Instagram accounts, one YouTube channel, Geo-localization app and a Tagboard where user-generated content was displayed. 71 publications and 4 professional videos were created. 4 digital contests with attractive prizes served as extra incentive for participants to join the online discussion about carnival. Additional cool thing about Social Newsroom was its interactive lighting system that adjusted to color of pictures uploaded by fans into their Instagram profiles.

Another win for Philips

All these actions sound very cool and you’d probably want to take part in such event. But what did Philips gain thanks to their contribution? A lot! Not only the brand managed to reach out to over 1 million social media users, but also the platforms earned 15,424 content fan likes! Videos got 41,000 hits and content generated in Social Newsroom was shared 299 times! On top of that, Internet monitoring tool collected 404 users’ mentions with Philips brand.

These results speak for themselves. It was definitely worth engaging in such action.

Organizers’ point of view

Socialyse team concur that the event turned out to be success. This is not the first time they cooperated with Philips Lighting, which, in their opinion, is a great client with huge amount of trust.

“First Festival in Łódź was an experiment for us and for Philips, but everything went better than we expected. That’s why we decided to run such event in Lublin during the greatest Festival – Carnival Sztukmistrzów.” Diana, Social Media Specialist at Socialyse, admits. “Full variety of artists and performers helped us to engage different target groups. We wanted to move real life events into social media. All event attractions and shows appeared in our channels. Our main goal was to avoid intense and clear Philips branding despite Philips Brothers Square. It wouldn’t be possible without Lublin council and personal engagement of the Philips Lighting marketing team. We involved various official and nonofficial social profiles of Lublin in our actions. As Philips Moc Światła and Philips Lighting Poland we could engage people from Poland, but thanks to local media, we could achieve higher position in local community.” Diana sums up.

Leverage social media at your event

Social media is a perfect way to enrich your event, but you have to use platforms wisely. Pre- and post-event engagements are equally important as during the happening. However, you should remember that you want participants to actively involve in both offline and online attractions, not to discourage them from an event. If you want to move all the attraction to the social world and increase social media reach, follow our tips.

1. Design a special hashtag for the event

1. Run an interactive mobile app that would help participants navigate throughout the event

1. Interact with participants on social media platforms and encourage them to share content with dedicated hashtag. Be responsive!

1. Engage influencers before the event so they would help you promote a conference, concert, festival or whatever you organize.
2. Run a social stream where content about the event will be displayed. You can use social listening to collect mentions with dedicated hashtag and then present them on screen in real time.

Need a social assistance during your event? Leave us a comment!