Manifest Urban Arts Festival Case Study

June 21, 2017  /  Aleya Washington

Manifest Urban Arts Festival is a showcase of the young talent at Columbia College Chicago. The festival includes live music, food trucks, fashion shows, street performers, and department showcases featuring graduating student’s work. Manifest occurs at the end of each school year as a time to celebrate the creativity on campus.

Challenges

Prior to working as the Marketing Assistant for Manifest, the Manifest team had challenges in the following areas:

  • Increasing student participation in department showcases

  • Assisting attendees with navigating the festival

  • Increasing their following on social media platforms

For that reason, I created a marketing plan that focused on informing students about Manifest and the different ways to participate in the festival. Below are the results of my 5 month social media campaign. 

Results

 

Since the festival occurs at the end of the spring semester, it was difficult to get feedback from students on their experience with navigating the festival. Therefore, I was unable to determine if the maps and posters of the schedule helped students. However, I was able to track the social media accounts. Although the number of followers increased on all of the Manifest social media accounts, Snapchat experienced the most growth. The following on Snapchat increased by 85%. I believe this is due to the college student marketing segment. Students stated that they used Snapchat more than Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter during the focus group I conducted before implementing the marketing plan. For that reason, it’s not surprising that more students followed the Snapchat account.