Live Business Breakfast: Variety Australia, Twilio Present Shortlist for ‘Best Live Event Marketing Campaign’

Australia’s premium youth publisher, The Brag Media, presents Variety Australia and Twilio’s inaugural Live Business Breakfast, June 13 at Sydney’s 12-Micron. On the morning, seven special awards will be handed out for excellence in live entertainment. Variety Australia now unveils the shortlist for one of those categories, Best Live Event Marketing Campaign. April Fools teasers, Bondi Beach activations, unprecedented pop-up arena tours — the marketing machines behind Australia’s most popular live music events built the dream, banged the drum, captured ears, eyes and got bums on seats. Three of those campaigns caught Variety Australia’s ears and eyes.

1. Beyond the Valley

Make no mistake, it’s tough out there for music festival operators. The challenges are many and varied. No one in the ecosystem is having an easy ride. For the team behind Beyond The Valley, ideas are winners. A jewel in Untitled’s crown, Beyond The Valley is one of the country’s most favourite camping fests, posting the sell-out sign (35,000 capacity) for its most recent event from Dec. 28-Jan. 1. Superstar DJ Dom Dolla led the bill, and has now played at all eight editions. Untitled Group marketing director Katz Serrao gets the crowds going, too. Among the best — an “out-of-the-box campaign,” starring a poster splashed with the slogan “There’s no place I’d rather be,” and a phone number just begging to be called. The hotline reportedly received more than 4,000 calls, and 833 people left 356 minutes’ worth of voicemails singing lyrics to a Rüfüs Du Sol song (members of the Grammy Award winning act played a secret set at BTV). Steph Mrmacoski, senior marketing manager/major festivals specialist, has adeptly unleashed the power of TikTok to get BTV fans through the gate.

2. Fred Again.

With his latest visit to Australia, Fred again… did something few artists should attempt – a surprise arena tour. First, the lava-hot British producer and electronic music artist announced a pop-up show at the iconic Sydney Opera House, which triggered a virtual stamped as more than 145,000 queued for fewer than 3,000 tickets. That was by some distance the biggest on-sale demand for the Concert Hall. If that was fun, the campaign went to another level when Fred announced a “pop-up” arena tour. It had never been done at this scale, it might never be done again. But it was a raging success. “He loves the idea of the joy of going and buying a ticket and following up very quickly with the actual show,” explains TEG Live managing director Tim McGregor. The adventure, presented by Handsome Tours, Laneway Presents, Teg Live and Astral People, was a “hair-raising” one, and shifted more than 200,000 tickets. Audacious and unprecedented.

3. Pearl Jam

Australians can’t get enough of Pearl Jam. Indeed, they haven’t had much of the Seattle rock legends of late. That will change when the “Dark Matter World Tour 2024” swings through in November, for the band’s first dates here in 10 years. The Aussie leg, produced by Live Nation, includes concerts at Sydney’s Giants Stadium. The magic dust for those shows was sprinkled with a two-day activation on Bondi Beach, in partnership with INVNT. The “Push” embodied creativity, fandom, nostalgia, and hype, and brought the beach to a standstill, say reps at LN. An everyday crossing on one of Australia’s busiest beaches became a rock ‘n’ roll stroll down memory lane. The campaign was activated by way of a hacked pedestrian crossing button that played Pearl Jam’s iconic 1991 hit “Alive”. A QR code at the other end unlocked a microsite, where fans could access early release tickets and a world-first preview of “Dark Matter”. The #PushforPearlJam, #PearlJam, and #DarkMatter socials did their job, and street teams did theirs at prime outdoor locations around Bondi Beach, including bus shelters, pole posters, and street stencil art.