Edinburgh International Festival
Edinburgh International Festival
- Media
In 2024, Edinburgh International Festival entered a new phase of ambition, marking the first year of a long-term brand growth strategy under the artistic direction of Nicola Benedetti.
With a bold new theme — Rituals That Unite Us — the Festival set out to grow recognition, deepen cultural relevance and drive ticket sales across an ambitious and diverse programme.
Operating within a crowded cultural landscape, heightened competition from the Fringe, and increasingly late booking behaviour, the challenge was clear: build brand equity at scale while delivering strong commercial outcomes — all on a comparable budget to the previous year.
EIF needed more than tactical media planning.
To stand out in a fragmented arts marketplace, the campaign had to emotionally prime audiences early, clarify the Festival’s distinct role versus the Fringe, and convert interest into bookings across multiple genres and price points.
We delivered a full-funnel media strategy that put brand at the heart of performance.
By separating brand and sales activity — while ensuring both worked together — we guided audiences seamlessly from awareness to consideration to conversion. High-impact channels like TV, radio and premium OOH built mass reach and cultural salience, creating the perception of ubiquity essential for a flagship festival.
Mid-funnel activity used rich, contextual media across digital, video, audio and specialist arts titles to nurture demand, while bottom-funnel performance channels focused on securing bookings through targeted, optimised paid social and search.
An agile, test-and-learn approach allowed us to continuously optimise activity in-flight, reallocating budget based on real-time performance signals and audience behaviour.
To amplify visibility and talkability, we also delivered a standout experiential activation — the Giant EIF Brochure — bringing live performances directly into the city and reinforcing EIF’s presence within Edinburgh’s cultural fabric.
Results
The result was a campaign that provided bold brand thinking and full-funnel media orchestration, driving both cultural relevance and commercial success — resulting in EIF's best-performing financial year since 2019, +20% YoY growth and laying the foundations for EIF’s long-term ambition to be an unmissable global arts festival.109%
Increase on digital reach YoY
41%
CTR Increase. 15% reduction in CPC YoY
28M
Impacts across OOH. TV. Radio. Print.