Neonsplash
Creating a new dance event selling 1 million tickets
Client
Neonsplash® combines UV-light activated neon-paint, electronic music and innovative show performances into a unique experience. Growing explosively since its founding in 2011, attracting over 1 million visitors across 15 countries, the company was acquired by Belgian music promotor ShadowToLive in 2014. Visit site: shadowtolive.be
Challenge
In 2011, the founders of Neonsplash organised sold-out club shows across Germany (+-500 visitors). After a brief project-based collaboration, the founders asked Elwin to become their partner, taking the role of managing director for the Netherlands and creative director of the overall event- and marketing concept, sharing the financial risk. Goal: growing Neonsplash from a hyped ‘proof-of-concept’ into a commercially succesful international dance event.
Work
Inspired by iconic dance events such as Sensation - Elwin knew intuitively that the Neonsplash concept would be most successful when functioning at scale. The effect of the neon-paint would be amplified by the larger venue and audience size, while the larger budget from ticket sales would allow adding a spectacular show experience.
Concept-wise, Elwin upgraded the show concept from a club-sized event for 500 visitors into a concert-hall sized event for 5.000-20.000 visitors. Adding larger than life show performances (e.g. LED-enhanced bungee stunt-men bouncing from the roof), stage designs, special effects, lighting, visuals (including the first 3D visuals ever at a dance event with 3D glasses for each visitor for show moments) and for the paint itself; developing stadium size paint-cannons, fire hoses and more for the stage-artists to use. Each element adding to the concept’s appeal and longevity.
Neonsplash management team in front of a sold-out Heineken Music Hall show (l.t.r.); David Zimek, Florian Eckelmann, Siamak Ghofrani, Elwin Stevelink, Matthew Mockridge
Marketing-wise, we realised we were in a unique opportunity gap;
- the visuals of our partygoers covered in paint were instant viral on social media
- our full target audience was newly active on social media (Facebook)
- Facebook was much less regulated and commercialised, as such allowing the most progressive marketing tactics
- our competition in the event-industry relied massively on expensive traditional media
- our competition relied heavily on (monopolistic) booking of exclusive artists, while we marketed primarily on concept
As such, we laser-focussed our marketing efforts on social media campaigning. We invested in photography and filmography elevating our concept, learning facebook advertising techniques and created massive online ambassador-communities in each country. The latter of which we invented ourselves and turned out to be the best performing and most price efficient marketing tool we’d ever come across.
How so? In the spirit of - currently popular - micro influencers, we mobilised a hundred local students before each event’s campaign started, offering a free event ticket in return for amplifying our social media campaign on their social media channels; sharing each post and inviting all online friends to our facebook event-pages, resulting in price-less exposure right within our target groups from the voice of those who they trusted most; their own friends. The fact that we offered no financial rewards to our ambassadors - only a ticket - ensured two things; that each ambassador was our target audience ánd was intrinsically motivated and authentic when hyping our event with their friends.
Our campaigns on all channels - ambassadors, social media posts and social media advertising - led up to one moment; the start of our online ticket-sales, at which we sold-out the majority of our ticket categories within the first minutes. All adding to the feeling of scarcity and with that; the hype. It was not uncommon that these peak-moments crashed the (surprised) online ticket-sales platforms.
Impact
The distinctive event concept combined with our innovative social media marketing strategies resulted in an explosively growing brand and fanbase, attracting over 1 million visitors across 15 countries since our start in 2011. By the end of 2014, Neonsplash was acquired by Belgian music promotor ShadowToLive in 2014, embodying a highly valuable customer base of Generation Y audiences across the continent.
Ziggo Dome announcing it’s Neonsplash show on its four 90 meter outdoor wall LED screens
Testimonials
“Elwin is a well educated and highly intelligent entrepreneur who does not aim lower than achieving excellent results. Due to his eclectic business experience and educational background, Elwin has the ability to quickly solve complex problems in the search of an unilateral win win for all parties involved. Most striking about Elwin however, is his loyalty, long breath and from the ground up positive attitude.”
- Florian Eckelmann, Neonsplash CEO & Founder