Attracting New Audiences to Tradition

Influencer Marketing and Content Creation

In 2019, we became the lead agency partner for one of the state’s oldest athletic events, a historic and thriving rodeo and festival. This annual summer competition attracts athletes and tourists from across the United States and entertains thousands of local Utahns.

The client was transitioning to our team from its previous agency of several years, which resulted in an eight-month overlap between both agencies. Knowing that transitions can be hard, our team made it a priority to foster clear and constant communication among all parties so a successful collaboration would be possible. This was done by holding regular meetings with both agencies, sharing and transferring incumbent knowledge, and familiarizing ourselves with the existing library of assets.   

As part of our full-service execution of a multi-channel marketing plan for our client (public relations, media buying, out-of-home, broadcast, and organic and paid social media), we heavily leaned in with efficient influencer marketing tactics.     

One of the client’s strategic objectives for the year was to expand the appeal of the event to everyday citizens and casual spectators, especially families. To reach this audience, our team selected 14 influencers from within our nurtured network who already reached this demographic. In total, they had a combined social following of more than 2.4 million. 

We then briefed the influencers on an activation plan that included discounted tickets, real-time social media content during the event, and post-event wrap-up and review content. This led to 25 posts by creators, more than 235,000 video views, and 25,000 Instagram engagements.

Collaboration and Giveaway Increases Followers

Our influencer marketing strategy for the client also included a partnered giveaway with a family-branded Instagram account that reached the target audience. This giveaway resulted in more than 400 comments and entries, more than 500 new followers (a 13% increase) to the client's account over the three days of the contest.

Athlete Partnerships

In addition to leveraging our network of social media influencers, we also worked with well-known national rodeo athletes, both in social promotion and in our overall branding efforts.

For example, we partnered with one athlete—who has 100,000 social media followers—and featured him in new campaign photography as well as capture video and audio shorts for Instagram Stories content.

As a further demonstration of collaboration, our team shared duties with the outgoing agency in supporting and interacting with influencers both in-person at the event and online with engagement on influencer content. This partnership approach extended into the overall social media publishing plan and calendar, which also involved coordination with an additional third social media contractor. We architected and distributed workflows and responsibility protocols among the four parties. Due to our collaboration, the transition felt smooth and the deliverables were achieved.