The Campaign

Vivid Sydney positions the city as the creative hub of Australia and the Asia Pacific region and delivers innovative live entertainment and inspiration on a grand scale. Vivid Sydney is where art, technology and commerce intersect. It is a summit, forum and playground for the creative industries, and the website needed to reflect this. The Vivid Sydney website was redesigned in 2016 to be aesthetically beautiful, innovative and most of all streamlined. The new look and interaction allowed visitors to quickly and easily browse, discover and map all the phenomenal events Vivid had to offer with the visual impact a festival like Vivid Sydney demands.

Creative Execution

Over five weeks, the site was built in HTML, employing first in class UX, intuitive design and mobile first interactivity. Vivid Sydney’s events are broken down into 3 categories: light, music and ideas. On the Vivid Sydney 2016 website, three core event pillars, ‘Light’, ‘Music’ and ‘Ideas’ were called out, giving weight to the lesser known categories (Vivid Sydney is traditionally known for its spectacular light shows, and less for its music acts and thought-provoking speaker events). These prominent menu buttons also helped the consumer flow through their journey to find exactly what they were after in a minimum number of clicks. The search functionality of the site was also optimised through the use of filters, and dynamic ‘Vivid Trails’ content.

Over the three month period, there were more than 2.2 million visits to the website, up 22% from the previous year. Pageviews increased 10% year-on-year, with 5.7 million pageviews. Vital to the success of Vivid Sydney’s increase in attendance can be seen in the website numbers of Unique Users, which grew 25% YOY, at 1.5 million visits. Other noteworthy statistics: 5,700,000 pageviews (up 10% YOY) 1,500,000 unique users (up 25% YOY) The Vivid Sydney festival delivered: • 2.31 million attendees • 54,000 Vivid Ideas attendees • 88,300 Vivid Sydney travel packages were sold • Over 44,100 international; over 44,200 domestic • 17, 827 visitors from China bought Vivid Sydney travel packages • More than132,000 attendees at Vivid Music events • More than 54,000 attended Vivid Ideas events • Over 2.2 million visits to www.vividsydney.com

Google Analytics website data from 2015 revealed that over 50% of traffic was from mobile devices, informing our strategy of mobile-first interactivity. We also knew that 40% of our visitors were 25-34, so looked to engage this group, known for their short attention span, with video-rich content. We executed first in class user experience (UX), with intuitive design (including navigation and filters) featured throughout. This ensured we provided a cross-device digital user journey that enhanced the event, from inspiring visitation to assisting in planning and the informing the visit. We also needed to ensure we didn't alienate any of our targets, with various events appealing to different combinations of young families, older families, couples, singles, creative industry professionals and regional and overseas visitors. The Vivid Sydney 2016 website also played a key role in informing stakeholders (media, NSW Government, partners) and providing event information in a timely manner.