First night boston 2018

First Night Boston started in 1975 and has been a New Year’s Eve celebration of artistic performances, the wonders of the season and the beginning of a new year. Boston’s First Night celebration is now managed by Conventures and is free and open to all.

Challenge

When I took over the social media for First Night Boston, the experience had recently changed and the focus was on the Back Bay area. I wanted to shine a light on the area’s restaurants, promote the event through local businesses, increase user-generated content online, and extend the ‘life‘ of the event beyond the one-day event. The challenge was accomplish all of this with minimal budget in an environment where digital experiences had not previous been a priority.  

Solutions

• Long-Form Content: Ten new content articles were created to drive traffic to the website while providing a valuable resource to attendees that was helpful, informative, and entertaining. From infographics to artist spotlights and featured hotels, I drove over 50k impressions on social media, generated almost 1200 clicks, and over 21k page views.

• Digital Scavenger Hunt: Implementing the Scavenger Hunt as a mobile / digital activation was extremely well received by attendees, local businesses, and the media. My goals for First Night 2018 were to: incorporate a new, digital experience to First Night 2018; drive foot traffic to local businesses and; encourage social sharing to increase earned impressions - I utilized the GooseChase app to host a mobile scavenger hunt where participants were presented with missions, that when completed, earned them points. Missions required players to upload photos/videos, check in to designated locations using GPS or answer text-based questions, all of which tied to my goals. There were 1,599,700 total points earned by 835 registered attendees, 62 missions (19 digital/43 physical), and 998 photos received. Take a look at the recap below for marketing efforts and complete results.

Results

• Impressions 408,682

• Engagements 15,490

• URL Clicks 3,262

• Hashtag (#FirstNightBoston) Mentions 1,174 + Potential Reach ~406,800

• Video Views: ~7k (Facebook 77%, Twitter 20%, Instagram 3%)