Record year for flagship festival at Gloucester Docks
How do you top an event which already attracts tens of thousands of people? Well, give it a new theme and get some men using jet power to fly – that’s how!
Gloucester Tall Ships Festival which is held every two years is a flagship event for the city championing the area’s maritime history and waterfront regeneration.
This year’s festival was even bigger and better than ever with a new name the Gloucester Tall Ships and Adventure Festival with a focus on attracting people to its adrenalin-fuelled displays and activities as well as its traditional amazing vessels and historical re-enactment.
Eastwood Digital created and delivered the public relations strategy for the festival which featured Gravity Jet Suit displays, a 1,000ft long zip wire and wake boarding as part of its different slant on the event.
Our PR strategy was simple – focus on the family market promoting the event as a great value day out for all ages. Its heavy social media focus alongside outdoor advertising at target railway stations, radio marketing and optimised adverts using the local media helped make this the most successful Tall Ships Festival so far.
The event reached 1.2m people across the Gloucester and Tall Ships Festival social media accounts and working with the Gravity PR team, video coverage of the event went international achieving well in excess of 2m video views.
Video played a huge part in our strategy both before, during and after the event using Fluxx Films to create engaging short video edits.
BBC Points West dedicated its live news programme to the event on the Friday before the festival and we also had coverage on the national ITV News at Ten.
Gloucester as a whole benefited hugely from the festival with reports the economic impact to the city was in excess of £11m.
