Bringing Pig Out Into the Social Media Era

In 2011, Spokane’s Pig Out In the Park revamped its marketing, using social media and a mobile-friendly website to provide an awesome experience for customers.

Article Contents

Pig Out In the Park is a unique marketing challenge every year. A Labor Day tradition, it is an annual event that runs for six days, caters to the diversity of the Inland Northwest, produces 82 free concerts, has between 48 and 55 food booths, and three adult-beverage gardens. However, because it is an annual event, Pig Out in the Park must attract new customers as well as recreate the excitement of the event for yearly attendees.

Challenges and Opportunities

This year, Pig Out in the Park 2011 targeted a new demographic by featuring younger bands performing on the main stage in order to appeal to 21- to 40-year-olds. The other stages had an array of music from a solo guitarist to an explosive violinist. Music not only invites audiences to the event, but music is used to drive traffic to the food booths.

Pig Out in the Park, Spokane’s annual Labor Day food and entertainment festival, was started 32 years ago in an effort to support local small businesses, to entertain live music lovers, and to add to the rejuvenation of our community and the vitality of Downtown Spokane.

Running the Numbers

Pig Out in the Park features 54 food vendors and over 250 menu items. Every year Pig Out in the Park has added approximately 35 percent new food vendors. Over 235 different restaurants/vendors have participated. We include traveling food vendors from all over the United States. One of the things Spokane likes best about Pig Out is the ethnic and cultural diversity of the people and food vendor/restaurants. This year’s event was a good example. Represented are authentic Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, German, Italian, Korean, Indian, Native American, American, Bavarian, Spanish, French, Jordanian, Russian, Hawaiian, Thai and other Middle Eastern foods. Pig Out is Spokane’s largest cultural event.

Entertainment is half the menu at Pig Out in the Park. Since the first Pig Out, our local, regional and national entertainment budget has grown to this year’s new total of $195,000. Including this year’s three-stage entertainment schedule, Pig Out in the Park has presented more than 1,600 FREE concerts.

During the event, Riverfront Park/City of Spokane receives nearly $200,000 in gross beverage, park attractions and other concessions sales (Pig Out in the Park is Riverfront Park’s most profitable event). Food vendors and restaurants have a very wide range of success, all between $3,500 and $50,000 in sales over six days. Pig Out in the Park has developed a regional reputation for our audience draw and a national reputation for the quality of our entertainment. It has been reported that the total annual economic benefit from Pig Out in the Park for the Spokane community is roughly $4.7 million.

Since 1979, Burke Marketing has raised approximately $7 million to stage Pig Out in the Park. Since there is no admission fee, this has been done with restaurant participation fees, sponsorships and support from over 385 local Spokane County businesses.

Marketing for the annual event has included a strong newspaper advertising campaign, regional radio advertising, postering and active public relations campaign. For the 2011 event an aggressive electronic campaign was produced including regional television advertising. Design Spike®, Inc. of Spokane, Washington was retained to produce a well-designed and well-managed internet and social media campaign. Their job was bringing Pig Out into the social media era.

The 2011 Pig Out in the Park produced record food sales for our vendors. All headline concerts drew very large audiences. We are now planning for an even better 2012.

Creating the Buzz

The challenge was to create on-going “buzz” and excitement about the event in order to drive consumers to the food booths. Taking the conversation to the social media audience, all the while continuing to pursue mainstream advertising, would create the buzz the Pig Out in the Park coordinators were looking for. It should be noted that most in the general audience, the Spokane community, have mobile devices. It should be noted that in the current economic tide, attendance at public events has visibly decreased by 17-35 percent, presenting yet another challenge for Pig Out in the Park. As a result of dwindling attendance trends, the second challenge focus became encouraging return patrons.

It must be noted, taking the conversation “social” meant increased monitoring and increasing on the spot feedback. Communication had to be as immediate as possible if a social strategy were to succeed.

Burke Marketing turned to a new campaign that included a redesigned website with an emphasis on function, information and connection. The traditional print and television advertising included nods to the social connection strategies and the mobile website access. And lastly, the social media portion was used to create ongoing conversations and interactions all focused on promoting Pig Out in the Park. The multi-pronged campaign eventually led to an incredibly successful event.

The plan began by building an infrastructure that would support an ongoing delivery of updated information. Very early on, Design Spike®, Inc.’s selected the right social networking platforms for the event and build and sustain audience attendance to the event. Conversations were started before artwork was even in place. Additionally, all print material included a QR code (Quick Response code that is a type of matrix barcode, or two-dimensional code), driving traffic to the website, which was updated throughout the event. We quickly learned to be quite flexible in our approach.

Design Spike®, Inc. began the social networking campaign by creating a content and posting strategy initially based on targeted demographics. The next step was to create Facebook page and set up Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Flickr accounts for Pig Out in The Park. Once the accounts were created, engagement followed in a systematic manner, culminating in a veritable trough of information throughout the event. It should be noted that both content and strategy remained flexible before and during the event in order to address ongoing user interaction.

We used this report to track impressions and feedback with our Facebook presence.

Facebook

In May, 2011, the Pig Out in the Park Facebook page was built and put online. Facebook is an online social networking service, allowing users to create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages. Initially, the page had zero followers and zero daily users. By the time Pig Out began, the Facebook page grew, having 1,227 “likes” and over 3,500 daily users. During the week of the event there were over 190,000 page views with over 885 users providing feedback. Most popular were posts winding down Pig Out in the Park and the “thank yous” posted to all who supported Pig Out via Facebook over the course of the event.

Twitter

We used this Twitter dashboard to track interactions.

Shortly after the Facebook page was in place, Design Spike®, Inc. set up Twitter, a free social networking and micro-blogging service. In June, there were 140 followers. Toward the end of the event, there were 346 followers. What was startling was the growth of followers during the event. Twitter allowed Pig Out to provide information and images of both concert schedules and food products, respectively. Twitter also provided a way to connect with individuals, encourage “evangelists” (people who will voluntarily espouse your product), answer questions or give directions on the spot. With Twitter, even more so than Facebook, content had to be fluid and responses needed to be immediate.

Design Spike®, Inc. used Instagram (a photosharing mobile phone application) to not only continue growing followers and sustain conversation but to put a spin on the standard Pig Out in that Park pictures by adding various filters. Tumblr, a free blog hosting program, provided information that could be distributed to other social networks. And lastly, Flickr, an online photo management and sharing application, provided an online destination for the hundreds of images taken by Design Spike®, Inc. staff and Pig Out fans.

Mobile Website

The need for an optimized mobile experience became clear.

On the second day of Pig Out, Google Analytics showed that 18% of visitors to the Pig Out in the Park website were coming from mobile devices. Immediately implementing a mobile version of the website and installing a QR code on the home page of the web version, increased mobile visitors to over 30%.

Mobile Site Requirements

We used these guidelines to provide a usable, well-integrated mobile experience.

All content from the main site must be accessible on the mobile site
Content must fit the width of the device’s screen
Content must be readable on a small screen
No horizontal scrolling
Navigation must be easy to find and activate with a touch screen
Branding, including colors, fonts, and logos, must be retained from the main site
Site must have the same domain name and URL structure, so that links can be shared between the desktop and mobile devices

To achieve these goals, we used a combination of CSS3 media queries and custom style rules which would only activate on small screens. This made it easy to maintain the site, since both versions would have the same content, with only the presentation changing depending on the device.

The mobile site retained the branding of the main site by using the same logo, fonts, and colors.

All information on the main site was also accessible to mobile users.

Overall Event Results

This year’s Pig Out showed a 17 percent increase in food sales, and a nine percent increase in adult beverage revenue. There were approximately 89,500 visitors who attended the event. Bill Burke, owner of Burke Marketing, the production company that produces Spokane Pig Out in the Park, said that this year there was “better response to the music than ever.”

Statistics also show that Pig Out in the Park’s Facebook page went from 0 users to 3,434 active daily users in less than three months, collecting more than 36,875 daily news feed impressions in one day. Twitter gained over 100 followers in one day. Social networks were at their most active just leading up to and during the event. These numbers were achieved by aggressive social networking, which included having Design Spike employees on site, talking to patrons, creating live feeds, pushing content to various social channels, immediately responding to questions, and ensuring continuity between the social networking and website.

The mobile website immediately increased traffic by 8,817 visits, of which 68.53 percent were new visitors. Over the remaining 4 days of the event, mobile traffic accounted for 31 percent of all visits, and the mobile bounce rate dropped by 10% percent. It is impossible to say if this was due to the mobile website or because of increasing interest by mobile users. However, the increasing number of mobile users had a better experience than they otherwise would have.

Key Takeaways

Burke Marketing learned the value of real-time engagement. Customers’ questions were immediately answered online, reducing the number of telephone calls. Any modifications to concerts or concert times were immediately addressed. Posting pictures of the event, food, people, and park on Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr reinforced the excitement of actually being attending Pig Out.

Now, Burke Marketing is looking forward to using social media platforms to create buzz about its other events as well as to promote Spokane Pig Out in the Park 2012.

While the online social networking campaign ran heavily for six days, the website continues to exist. The focus is now on the success of the 2011 event; however, the site also offers information and applications for vendors who are interested in participating in the 2012 event.

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