Taste Great Southern

Growing a multi-day food and wine festival's reach beyond its home region, one season at a time...

Category: Events · Services: Meta Advertising, TikTok Advertising, Google Advertising, Campaign Management & Tracking, Audience Strategy, Budget Optimisation

The challenge

This multi-day food and wine festival needed to grow attendance from outside its home region — locals already knew about the event, so the real opportunity was reaching new travellers in Perth and the South West. With dozens of individual ticketed experiences live at once, from large festival markets to small masterclasses, the campaign also needed to flex spend across very different capacities and price points.

Our solution

Big Head Digital ran a multi-channel campaign across Meta, TikTok and Google, deliberately prioritising out-of-region audiences to grow the festival's reach beyond locals who already knew it. Advantage+ campaigns were seeded using warm audiences from other successful festivals in the same portfolio, while a mix of individual event ads and catalogue-style ads let budget flow toward whichever experiences needed a push. This work was delivered in partnership with AHOY Events.

Strategy

  1. Target where the growth is — Campaigns deliberately prioritised out-of-region audiences in Perth and the South West, since locals already knew the event — putting spend where new growth was actually possible.
  2. Seed cold audiences with warm data — Advantage+ campaigns were seeded using audiences from other successful festivals in the same portfolio, giving new-audience campaigns a warmer starting point.
  3. Rotate spend toward what needs it most — With dozens of individual ticketed experiences live at once, budget was continually reallocated toward events lagging on ticket sales, while pulling back on anything already selling through.
  4. Test channels beyond the obvious — Meta carried the core load, but TikTok and Google were tested specifically for awareness and reach among younger, out-of-region audiences.

Results