Building a Festival Fan Base
In 2022 we were asked to help brand and build Gwyl Wal Goch Festival for Football Lovers, the first ever global festival of all things football related.
The challenge was not just to create a brand from scratch but to find an audience for the festival in an extremely crowded market. Our visuals and messaging had to be both nostalgic, tapping into the magic of football legends and lore, at the same time as looking forward and not shying away from controversy.
Our organic content reached an audience of nearly 1,500,000 with an engagement of 7.06%. The festival featured on ITV and BBC with Adrian Chiles’ Friday morning show going out live on Radio 5 from the festival site. The festival is now an established part of the festival landscape in the UK and takes place annually in Wrexham with satellite events across Wales.
Without giving away too many trade secrets (you’ll have to come and talk to us for those!), are there any lessons we can share about how we kick started this unique festival.
1. Define the Festival's Identity & Messaging
Clarify the festival’s tone and purpose: Is it progressive, traditional, interdisciplinary, youth-focused, local, or international?
Develop high-concept messaging: bak excels at “simple high concept ideas that power growth.” and we’d recommend starting by defining a standout slogan and visual identity that’s both culturally rooted and forward-thinking. In the case of Wal Goch, the core messaging was always about appealing to a core audience that was driven both nostalgic and forward thinking at the same time. No easy feet but we think we achieved it with our “Festival for Football Lovers” tagline that underpinned all our subsequent messaging. Not to mention the iconic John Charles image set in a cool contemporary design setting.
Create a tagline that captures the emotion or experience — e.g., "Festival for Football Lovers”, seemed to encapsulate that emotion for our audience. Wal Goch is above all a festival that appeals to the emotions, the lore and legends of the game in Wales and beyond. Both local and internationalist in outlook, proud of its heritage but progressive of spirit.
2. Audience Segmentation & Targeting
There are lots of really useful audience segmentation tools and research that you can find online to help you break down your target audience; find out where they hang out, where they get their news, who they look to for advice, what channels of communication they trust.
Core cultural community: Football clubs, fan groups near Wrexham — we engaged via direct invites, partnerships, and screenings.
At the heart of Wal Goch was the idea that football could be a force for positive social change. We started to construct a programme that could appeal not just to the football community but anyone who was interested in progressive change, including
NGO and social change sectors — speaking to them through themes (e.g., women in footbal, football and social inclusion, football and community building).
Local audiences: Use hyper-local ads, press, and event listings to invite the host community in.
Wider cultural crowd: Film, theatre, music lovers — retarget via social ads, lookalike audiences, newsletter swaps.
3. Outreach Channels
A. Social Media (Organic + Paid)
Use Instagram and LinkedIn (primary channels for bak) for:
Behind-the-scenes visuals, artist quotes, countdowns. These quotes and behind the scenes visuals were really popular with audiences. As were inspirationla montages of football highlights and games and competitions.
4. PR & Press
Above all, we were able to leverage bak’s creative network to land mass coverage of the festival on national radio and TV.
We hope this is helpful to you? If you want some more detail on building audiences for sport and art, come and have a chat with us at ….