The Vision
Fusion Fest: A Re-imagination of South Bend’s Ethnic Festival was a city-wide effort led by Venues Parks & Arts to bring incredible cultural experiences to the heart of downtown. Staff and committee members worked hard to envision a festival that would bring back the historic Ethnic Festival and bring new life to an event that took a 20-year hiatus.
This festival attracted over 30,000 local and regional guests and will be Venues Parks & Arts feature event for the foreseeable future.
The roles taken on by the Marketing Team included but were not limited to festival branding, managing photography and videography contracts, managing local and regional promotional efforts, and finding ways to bring surprise and delight through on-site photo opportunities, swag, and branded photo opportunities and signage.
Here, I have pictured samples of social media posts used to increase awareness, engagement, and create excitement surrounding Fusion Fest and an email I created to increase marketing reach. Fusion Fest was featured in all emails from February to September, but this email was specifically communicating event details at length to help people have the best experience at the festival.
Because this was our first year hosting Fusion Fest, we did not have photos from the event to use for promotions. Our team searched through all of our archives to select photos that would embody the feeling and experience people would have at the event. Photos in this post were taken at events such as Rebel Art Fest, West Side Wednesday, and Best Week Ever.
This reel was created on a loop to increase engagement and show a behind-the-scenes look at the beautiful mandalas being set up in Howard Park. While the goal of this post was to give people a preview of what Fusion Fest would look like, it was equally successful in engaging organically reached non-followers.
Using photos from the event, this post served to give people a highlight of day 1, give our sponsors some well-deserved love, and promote day 2.
Bailey Murphy 