BUKU Music + Art Project

A two-day electronic, hip-hop and indie rock music festival in New Orleans, founded in 2012 by Winter Circle Productions.

Overview & Objectives

The BUKU Music + Art project, a two-day electronic, hip-hop and indie rock music festival in New Orleans, was founded in 2012 by Winter Circle Productions (WCP). Bond was hired by WCP in 2012 to help promote the festival’s first year, assisting with local and national media relations and on-site event management.

After six successful years working with the BUKU Music + Art Project team, BUKU has shown tremendous growth, selling out the event many years (at 15,000/day) and establishing itself as a major festival contender within the electronic/hip-hop/indie rock space.

Our primary objectives each year are to drive ticket sales, secure local, regional and national media coverage and increase engagement on BUKU’s social media channels.

Approach

Year-over-year, our PR campaign consists of the following:

• Local, regional and national media relations
• On-site event management (artist interview coordination, media/photographer press pit coordination, etc.)
• Community relations/strategic partnership development

Our campaign highlights BUKU’s many years of growth/success and showcases BUKU’s unique on-site features (art installations, music stages, food, etc.). We also managed local artist relations, which allowed our team opportunities to generate preview coverage and on-site interviews for post-event features.

Leading up to the festivals, we began aggressive media outreach to promote the lineup announcement, additional announcements surrounding the festival’s art/food components and more to generate buzz and increase ticket sales. On-site at the event, our job was to coordinate all artist interviews with media, monitor all photo/press pits during artists performances and work with media to develop unique storylines around the festival’s many events.

Results & Impact

Our media and community relations-focused campaign proved successful, solidifying BUKU as a top music festival in New Orleans and throughout the country. Our campaign succeeded in increasing general awareness surrounding the festival to increase ticket sales (sold out shows 2014, 2015 and 2016), but also in gaining support from the New Orleans community.

Highlights from our PR campaigns include:

• Secured a large amount of local, regional and national media surrounding BUKU’s lineup announcement(s) to assist with increasing ticket sales—including Associated Press pick-ups each year included in over 100 outlets, features in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Huffington Post, New York Times, Pollstar, Digilove, Southern Living and much more
• Secured over 200 media contacts on-site during each festival (writers and photographers)
• Secured over 50 on-site artist interviews with various media outlets/artists during each festival
• Secured a large amount of post-event festival reviews to increase general festival awareness (over 100 post-event features per year)
• Secured a range of meetings with local business organizations (GNO, Inc., Chamber of Commerce, LED, New Orleans Business Alliance, NOTMC, NOCVB and others)
• Successfully assisted in creating a positive preference for BUKU among New Orleans community members