Brighton Fringe
Call to adventure
Brighton Fringe Festival brings Brighton alive in May each year by hosting over 800 shows across the city. It has four distinct key audiences, all of whom need to be approached slightly differently as its call-to-actions change throughout the year. The team asked us to help them create a strong, unified verbal brand which captures the organisation’s quirky, vibrant spirit.
Challenge
The message to Brighton Fringe's audience is very broad. Because it's an open-access festival, the main message to communicate is that there’s something for everyone. There are some much more specific messages that need to reach individual audiences, though. Supporters need to be reminded of the vibe of the festival and why they should invest in the Fringe, as well as what they’ll get in return. Participants and venue managers, however, need clear, concise information relayed in straightforward language to help them understand what’s needed of them.
Transformation
We created a fun, interactive language playbook to make it easier for the team to communicate as Brighton Fringe. It includes language, tone of voice and style guidelines; a vocabulary cheat-sheet and content tips. To make sure it's not just another document that sits on a server, it is housed in its own branded micro-site, which the team can interact with and get inspired by.
Interactive guidelines
The guidelines, hosted on Corebook, are designed to echo the vibe of the Brighton Fringe festival, with imagery from past events throughout. By making them so visually appealing and easy to navigate, the reader is more likely to absorb the content and feel inspired to revisit the guidelines whenever they need to.
In the end…
Brighton Fringe wanted to encourage more performers to sign up early for a 30% discount on 2023 festival slots, so we created a campaign concept and a core shareable graphic to help kickstart the season. This concept, which hinged the idea of the early bird catching the crowds, was flexible enough to be used across different channels with different calls to action attached. It made use of a great image from a previous Fringe show.
“You are a real pleasure to work with. Your insight has been so valuable and your structured sessions have really helped us think about our audiences and the messages we wanted to communicate. You’ve nailed our verbal brand guidelines and we love the campaign concept - it’s going to kick off the registration season in style. Thank you!”
– Rhiannon Lingwood, Marketing Manager at Brighton Fringe