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Case Study, October 2020
Durban FilmMart is a joint programme of the Durban Film Office (DFO) and the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF) and takes place in conjunction with Durban International Film Festival. The Durban FilmMart Finance Forum provides selected African filmmakers with the opportunity to pitch film projects to leading financiers. The Durban FilmMart also facilitates networking opportunities for African and international filmmakers to form alliances for the future.
The Durban FilmMart aims to:
In the true spirit of Africa, a global pandemic would not stop the 11th edition of the Durban FilmMart. With the country in lockdown, it would require a unique innovation to ensure that African & international filmmakers were able to gather & network.
The challenge was twofold:
Digitlab was the digital marketing agency tasked with attracting over a thousand attendees to the conference. Digitlab were also the technology partner, providing the broadcast and technological backbone to the conference. We handled the entire attendee experience from the first marketing email coupled with social media and online advertising, to the registration, the payment, the conference platform, the webinar delivery, the broadcast-level production and finally the supporting data analytics.
“Over and above the high production value of the event, and the no fear commitment from your teams, the digital marketing strategy was beautiful, insightful and impactful. Digitlab was on point in their approach, and it was amazing to watch all these elements weave together. Their understanding of this space creatively and strategically is really quite something to behold. I am humbled!”
Toni Monty – Senior Manager, Durban Film Office
The Marketing Campaign was built on an insight that “talent is universal, but opportunity is not”. The Durban FilmMart represents a wealth of opportunity for aspiring filmmakers, financers, networks, co-producers to name a few. The Marketing Campaign brought to life the rich opportunities available at Durban FilmMart. Campaign content profiled industry thought leaders and pioneers that were part of the speaker line-up, relevant content topics and industry challenges that were on the agenda as well as highlighting success stories and testimonials from previous Durban FilmMart attendees. This provided a holistic view of the rich opportunities available at the Durban FilmMart.
Count downs and time-sensitive offers were also leveraged to create a sense of urgency to register.
A selection of channels were used to create awareness and convert to sign-ups. This included PPC & Display, social media advertising & email marketing.
Alongside the digital marketing activity, a PR campaign was rolled out through Communications & Public Relations agency – Versfeld.
As this was a Pan-African virtual event we needed to provide possible delegates with a clear reason or hook as to why they should attend the conference and what they would get out of it. The target audience was the film industry in general including funders, sponsors and investors in the African film industry. Through our research, we uncovered 3 very clear unique selling points for the conference. Namely, delegates could learn from other people in the film industry, network with other suppliers and pitch their ideas to possible funders and sponsors.
As the creative had to transcend many different languages barriers we had to make the message very clear, simple and easy to understand and always end off with a call-to-action, which was registration sign-ups. We created many different assets across social, email and advertising platforms but in summary – here is the 60-second launch video and the launch day video.
The first phase of the media plan looked at gaining awareness through reaching a large volume of people that matched the targeting criteria. Some of the criteria included:
The second phase of the media plan was to convert these users using these strategies:
Overall, the key to the DFM Media strategy was proactivity rather than just reactivity. This approach was used so that we were constantly having eyes on the data. It got to a point where we could predict how a post was going to perform based on other similar ad sets in the campaign and, as a result, we could make a call to shift budgets or change up targeting strategies etc.
In a first for the African continent, the annual Durban FilmMart #VirtualEdition brought together leading & emerging African film professionals, industry partners & leading financiers to form alliances & create networking opportunities – all from their homes. This was always going to be an ambitious project – to bringing broadcast level production into a webinar.
A 40-strong production crew was assembled, with Digitlab being brought in as the point on the project; offering innovation, prototyping & marketing. This included:
We partnered with Zoom.us to bring speakers and panellists into a virtual studio that was not accessible to the public. This virtual studio meant we could control the output broadcast feed in a way that had never been done before. In the virtual studio, we were able to live mix video and audio feeds alongside high-quality creative assets. This created a vibrant and professional event experience that included engaging panel discussions, interactive audience participation, French translators and sign language interpreters. All virtual, from all corners of the earth, and delivered seamlessly within a single high-quality broadcast production.
Our event platform broadcast facilitated a five-day conference with four simultaneous content streams. In total, our platform facilitated the promotion, delivery and the participation of over a thousand delegates who engaged in over 60 hours of content.
The time-strapped Decision Makers who are integral to drive investment decisions in the Film Industry have been able to take part in the Durban FilmMart Virtual Edition more than ever before. The conferences attracted more than five times the amount of industry decision-makers than they normally attract with a physical event.
Each day, the conference was attended by over 1000 people. That means that over 95% over the attendees returned to the event every day – showing that the unique blend of technology, broadcast production and programming held the attention of the audience
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