Signature Events Series

Campaign objectives

Deliver three signature events

Our primary objective was to create a suite of premium events at three signature Star restaurants – Balla, Black Bar & Grill, and Sokyo – and sell each one out.

Add sustained value

A secondary objective was to provide an ongoing promotional tail, to help drive trial and visitation of these three venues through social and video content.

Consumer retention

Our third objective was to engage and retain our paying event customers, via voluntary opt-in to The Star’s newsletter database.

The events

Our delivery of these objectives followed a fairly linear path. Through early collaborative planning sessions with The Star – led by our insights into Time Out audience behaviour – we soon arrived at three original activation concepts:

Sokyo Social

Sokyo

Our first event concept was a night of premium Japanese whiskies and jazz, at Sokyo. Cocktails would be paired with delicate Japanese dishes like Kingfish wings robata with shichimi and lime, chicken yakitori don and mini goma street and strawberry mochi… we wanted to create Japanese aperitivo, with a tonne of good vibes. Read more

A gluten-free Italian feast

Balla

Our second event was designed as a generous three-course Italian meal, to be shared. Staged specifically for coeliacs and their friends, our menu was specially created for the event by Balla’s head chef, Gabriele Taddeucci. The feast-style service would encourage our guests to share and socialise with others around their table. Read more

The world’s best steak dinner

Black Bar & Grill

Our third event was built around the Jack’s Creek Farm striploin, which is exclusive to Black Bar & Grill, and won the top gong at consecutive World Steak Challenge competitions in 2015 and 2016 (it’s the type of steak that’ll have you closing your eyes, leaning back and groaning as pleasure firecrackers explode in your brain). Read more

Campaign promotion

Digital content
We created custom event content targeting our Restaurants audience, with ticketing built into each page.

Digital takeovers
Time Out designed high impact takeovers for each campaign, which were strategically targeted across desktop and mobile sites.

Custom video content
We created custom videos in collaboration with chefs and talent from The Star. See example below.

Competition
Time Out competitions were held to encourage email address submission. One lucky winner received double passes for all three events.

Premium newsletter tiles
Each event was promoted through our popular weekly newsletter.

Solus newsletters
Each event received solus newsletter promotion, ensuring the each event gained 100% share-of-voice with our database of food, drink and event-obsessed readers.

Content drivers
Strategically placed content tiles across the Time Out site ensured high visibility, in front of our core digital audience.

Facebook campaign
Paid and organic promotion through Facebook extended the reach of each campaign.

Post-event survey
We conducted three post-event surveys, to help the Star retain happy customers and gain valuable insight into their experience.

The results

✓

 All three events SOLD OUT in record time

100%

 event attendance

100%

 of Sokyo Social attendees would visit Sokyo on another occasion

100%

 of Sokyo Social attendees would recommend a Time Out event to friends

100%

 customer satisfaction with the Black Bar & Grill event

90%

 of Balla event attendees would attend another Time Out event

88%

 of Balla event attendees would visit the restaurant on another occasion

87%

 of attendees would attend another Time Out event

82%

 of Black Bar & Grill event guests were Time Out subscribers

✓

 All first-party declared survey data shared with The Star

✓

 Display assets received above average engagement

2,421

 new subscribers added to The Star’s newsletter database

“Based on their data-driven insights into which events work (and which don’t) we collaborated with Time Out to create three signature events that were geared to sell out – and they did, within days. To amplify interest and drive additional bookings from those who missed out on tickets, Time Out created two pieces of evergreen video content. We loved these videos so much, we ended up repurposing them for future use. Following each event, Time Out surveyed attendees and provided us with actionable insights for future activations. Working with content experts like Time Out makes the innovation needed to reach (and keep) new audiences easy.”

Jo Bennett
Director, Leisure & Entertainment, The Star