Case Study: Good Food & Wine Show 2023

The Good Food & Wine Show Melbourne 2023

The Good Food & Wine Show is the largest consumer food and beverage show in Australia, offering hundreds of local and international producers the chance to promote and sell their products to over 100,000 visitors and more than 300,000 digitally engaged customers.

Originally founded in Melbourne in 2001, the event is now held across Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland between May and October each year.

In 2023, Faith was appointed as their media agency of choice and set out implementing a plan to help grow their four key objectives:

1. Increase ticket revenue by

2. Increase visitor to exhibitor ratio to

3. I ncrease brand awareness by

15% 85:1

20%

4. Grow email subscribers by 10%

16.4% Increased ticket revenue

92.5:1 Increased visitor-to-exhibitor ratio

20% Increased brand awareness

19% Increased email subscribers

2023 Our Approach

Previous media campaigns had been felt to lack accurate measurement of engagement and conversion, which was attributed to the mix of channels utilised. Coupled with conservative budgets being allocated to fewer channels, due to associated costs, the Good Food & Wine Show team were unable to identify what parts of their previous activity were working.

Faith was keen to implement a full-funnel media strategy that targeted users at all levels of the user path to purchase. In our experience, campaigns that only run with a focus on one of these stages often struggle for effectiveness.

While we understand which channels are mapped to which stage of the path to purchase, the subsequent challenge was to understand budget constraints and proceed accordingly.

Given the dramatic rise of digital media as a viable alternative to traditional channels, offering lower costs, faster turnarounds and enhanced measurability, we were keen to see more of these channels embraced by Good Food & Wine Show. With conservative budgets available paired with the need for greater visibility around results, we ignored outdoor and radio advertising (two channels that were previously utilised), instead prioritising a programmatic campaign spread across the following channels:

Broadcast Video on Demand (BVOD)

BVOD Advertising offers a digitalonly alternative to traditional TV advertising, presenting advertising on channels such as 10Play, 9Now, 7Play, Foxtel Now, SBS On Demand & Kayo.

Roy Morgan data highlights that 7.5 million Australians watch BVOD (December 2021), and THINKTV report that advertising revenue for BVOD grew year on year as well. Far more cost effective than traditional TV, BVOD also offers greater transparency, reporting on impressions, reach and, yes, clicks. However, BVOD should be seen as a digital replacement for TV Advertising, meaning conversion is not the overall goal; rather, the channel is focused on driving awareness (a key objective of the full-funnel approach).

YouTube

Covering video advertising pre-rolls across YouTube ensures that our message reaches users at key moments in their day-to-day. YouTube advertising plays a greater role in the consideration phase of the path to purchase, with more ability to click and convert accordingly while still being highly informative and compelling.

Working with the Good Food & Wine Show team, we coordinated and cut together new 30-sec, 15-sec and 6-sec videos to be run on both BVOD and YouTube, which can be viewed above.

Music & Podcasts

With traditional radio listenership audiences becoming increasingly fragmented yearon-year, podcast listening has risen exponentially. In 2022, over nine million Australian listened to podcasts, an increase of 54% year-on-year.

And advertisers reacted accordingly, with spending on podcast advertising in australia growing 72% year on year. As a result, this channel is increasingly become a vital alternative to traditional audio media. Booked programmatically based on topics and interests, we see that podcast advertising can play a critical role in helping to spread awareness about the Good Food & Wine Show in key cities.

We originally created scripts for this channel which ran during the Melbourne Sydney shows, but beyond that show, this channel was paused due to the client redirecting funds.

Digital Display

Digital display advertising publishes brand content across a variety of related websites, delivering high impressions with the ability to click through to ticket sales and event information. However, given users are unlikely to click away from what they are browsing, digital display ads should be considered drivers of awareness and consideration, rather than conversion.

Creative should be compelling and engaging without being seen as distracting or off-message; integration of message across this and other platforms is crucial.

Faith is well-versed in producing highly effective digital display GIFs quickly and efficiently, helping produce four different sets for Good Food & Wine Show for each of their four events.

Meta

Given most brands are now quite active on Meta platforms, it makes total sense to include advertising on Facebook and Instagram in our media plan. In fact, our own research indicates this is a vital channel for driving conversion for ticketed events like Good Food & Wine Show. This channel relies on both sponsored posts and strategic boosting where appropriate.

Faith prefers to work with our clients to suggest appropriate posts and content to promote accordingly while still covering all the stages of the path to purchase. Meta advertising acts as a key conversion tool, meeting users where they spend the most of their time, in a format that is easy and compelling to engage with.

For this campaign, Good Food & Wine Show chose to use an alternate supplier for their Meta advertising; however, we would strongly recommend a fully integrated campaign with all channels running in concert with each other to maximise impact.

Google Paid Search

The last piece of the digital puzzle is search engine marketing, reaching users at their final point of enquiry, ready to make a purchase but unsure where to go. At the same time, carefully constructed keyword sets will help to continue reaching users at an earlier stage of the path to purchase, driving awareness and consideration as well.

We typically work with clients to identify a key list of keywords and continually refine negative phrases that offer little to no value to the campaign (though can also take any existing lists and tailor them based on our consideration). Coupled with Meta advertising, this acts as the strongest driver towards conversion within our campaign.

Digital Campaign Summary

Specifically focusing just on Melbourne’s show, we had a budget of $92K running across the above channels (minus Meta), also including some live TV crosses and contra spots on SBS. With the below expected results and actual outcomes, we were really pleased with the performance of the campaign. And so was the client.

Based on their on key outcomes, they recorded the following results:

1. Increase ticket revenue by 15%. 16.4%

2. Increase visitor numbers to a ratio of 85:1. It was 92.5:1

3. Increase brand awareness by 20%.

While this won’t be measurable until post-event research is conducted, we’ve clearly seen enhanced awareness from our customers

4. Grow email subscribers by 10%. We saw a 19% increase

Looking Forward

Marnie Nichols, Senior Marketing Manager, had this to say about Faith’s performance:

“The Melbourne campaign for the Good Food & Wine Show was a great success; we exceeded all our targets and objectives. The team at Faith were great to work with and managed to bring the campaign to life in an incredibly short time period to end bringing in some really outstanding outcomes for our business and brand.”

Faith is excited to work with Good Food & Wine Show on their events next year along with any other opportunities that might arise in the interim.

For more information about Faith’s creative, digital or media credentials, please get in touch!

Ben Crocker 0434 424 686

Megan Butler 0412 034 162