Parramatta Lanes is a free festival run by City of Parramatta Council that brings the city to life with food stalls, live music and art installations.
2022 was an event to celebrate, with COVID having clipped the wings of the festival for the past two years.
Hot off the heels of having just been recognised as one of the country’s top community festivals, Parramatta Lanes 2022 embodied a post-COVID ‘renaissance’ of Sydney culture.
The Brief
Sydney is buzzing with events, making the competition extremely fierce for media share-of-voice.
Blue Planet PR was tasked with making Parramatta Lanes cut through so it could shine…city-wide!
The goal was to secure meaningful media coverage that:
- Generated interest and attendance
- Grows the event’s reputation, encouraging more high-profile attractions and participants.
The Strategy
To achieve effective media coverage, Blue Planet PR segmented the target media outlets into categories, then devised unique news angles for each.
In addition, our multi-language team translated key media material into Chinese, so the story hit the right note with local Asian media.
With competition for media space being high and there being a small window for coverage to land, it was critical that:
- As much coverage as possible was pre-arranged
- Media spend was leveraged
- Coverage opportunities were maximised by disseminating daily highlights and visual assets to news desks
- Key talent and vendor interviews were meticulously coordinated, with the pre-event media day running like clockwork.
The curveball? Just before the event, Parramatta was in the headlines with the NRL Grand Final, and the opening of the new Phive building. This meant the media could have had their fill of Parramatta-centric stories by the time the Lanes event ticked around. Luckily that was not the case!
The Result
A brilliant event – packed venues, and fantastic engagement from a wide variety of media. 223 pieces of media coverage (with a reach of just under 10 million) were secured across television, radio, print, online and social media outlets. Of strategic importance, these included:
- Landing coverage in media outlets across the country, championing Parramatta Lanes and City of Parramatta Council as an example to all communities
- Garnering coverage across food, music and arts outlets; exposing it to potential participants
- Embracing the multicultural communities – with the Parramatta Lanes message reaching not just Chinese, but also Indian, Nepalese and many other cultural news outlets.
