Designers Doing It Live on Stage

The Insight

Cut&Paste is an annual digital design tournament that brings together graphic artists of all walks of life to showcase their craft onstage, in front of a live audience. When Cut&Paste expanded its tournament from 11 to 16 cities worldwide, they realized their previous grassroots and word-of-mouth initiatives weren't going to be enough to fuel the ticket sales necessary to pack all of their venues. It was time to call in reinforcements.

Into the Underground

When Channel V Media jumped on board, we realized that although the grassroots initiatives couldn't power the entire awareness program, the brand's underground and authentic approach had actually become a large part of its image—something we didn't want to interfere with by using conflicting tactics. Any hint of outsider influence would have meant certain ruin for Cut&Paste. This upfront insight is what allowed us to design an approach that would mimic their word-of-mouth outreach strategy, but on a much larger scale, using social media and other grassroots tactics.

Socializing

Because Cut&Paste's website didn’t have a blog or cater to online conversations, we created its social media foundation by introducing a network of Facebook profiles and a regularly-updated Twitter account. These elements allowed us to identify new audiences, engage with Cut&Paste's existing global audience, and keep them up to date about the tour and associated design contests. We created Facebook event pages and invitations for each city to remind users about each of the 16 events and encourage them to share the invitations with their friends. This social media foundation brought the already tightly-knit community closer together and created a forum where Cut&Paste fans could discuss design, the competition, its participants, and events, as well as get up-to-the-minute information on news and event highlights.

Final Call

Facebook and Twitter consistently ranked as top referral sources to the Cut&Paste site. Our work resulted in over 400 online mentions—an 800% increase over the previous year—as well as a huge increase in site traffic and online chatter, and an increase in per-venue ticket sales.