It was the second year that GroceryAid had put on this fundraising event, so they wanted to make it bigger and better in order to engage with their supporters, promote the cause and most importantly; raise as much funding as possible.

The Clive creative team were instrumental in the concept development for this project and came up with the theme of ‘Barcode Beach’. They developed the format ensuring all aspects of the festival complemented the beach vibes, whilst ensuring the brand identity was consistently maintained throughout.

While the creative team were busy developing the assets, marketing and strategy set about devising a content development and social media strategy to really make some noise. More on that later…

There were four main “zones” at the event in Hawker House in July. The venue was the perfect choice as a popular street food playground.

“The Arena” where headliners Jessie J, Basement Jaxx and Radio 1’s Nick Grimshaw performed, created a focal point for the festivities right underneath the social media and marketing hub, which was perfectly positioned to broadcast content of the brightly coloured balloon drops and epic confetti cannons.

“The Cantina” was the hub for food outlets and bars. And boy was there a lot of incredible F&B on the menu! From street food vendors to wine slushies, it was a feast for the senses… Not to mention an Instagrammer’s delight! 

“The Courtyard” housed the Demo Stage which showcased cocktail masterclasses and cooking demos from the likes of celebrity chef Ainsley Harriot and there was also “The Incubator”, a ribbon and bamboo enclosure that housed emerging brands. 

Clive supported GroceryAid’s pre-event and onsite social media activity across Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, increasing followers, engagement and visibility. The pre-event campaign focussed on interacting with the sponsor brands online and utilising their communities to widen our reach, as well as build momentum. Major food brands and king of the demos himself Ainsley Harriot had large followings and ensured our message was heard in as many places as possible.

Onsite we managed a team of 20+ “content capturers” who went around encouraging revellers to post, hashtag and amplify the event and activations, as well as capturing content themselves for the GroceryAid accounts. Our onsite Social Media Manager then broadcast a steady stream of updates live from the centre of the action.

The Clive team also managed the full guest registration system, website design, venue and project management, as well as the artist and sponsor liaison.

This foodie’s festival is the perfect summer party for everyone in the grocery industry. It’s used to reward, engage and incentivise teams, as an opportunity to network with customers and also for sponsors to activate their brands. The best part? All food and drink is included in the ticket price. Every. Single. Tasty. Morsel. With so many delicious opportunities to overindulge, we ensured there were enough chillout areas; with informal seating throughout the site for guests to sit back and enjoy the day when their bellies got too full!

In the end we worked with almost 50 sponsors to help them activate their brands through food, drink, immersive activities and more! Sponsors including Bacardi, Skittles, Heineken, Coca Cola and Kraft Heinz to name just a few. Brand activations included Airstreams, glitter artists, the cyclone game and an ice bar. We helped with the end-to-end project management and sponsorship liaison, pre-event, onsite and post-event, to ensure everything ran smoothly.

The entertainment didn’t stop at the sponsors and headline acts either. We arranged for all manner of roaming performers to keep people entertained and engaged, no matter where they were onsite. We had a steel band, old school strongmen and even Titan the Robot, an impressive 6ft robot who would interact with people before squirting them with water from secret nozzles!

With 2000 people in attendance, Clive helped GroceryAid raise a whopping £450,000, selling out the event and achieving their objectives to grow the event from the previous year online as well as offline. The festival was such a success that we’re returning to help them for Barcode 2020, which will see 4000+ attendees from the grocery industry come together, in a soon to be revealed, brand new location! We couldn’t be more excited. It’s going to be huge.