The Challenge

If you’re a bourbon lover, the Kentucky Bourbon Affair is your dream vacation. It’s six days of behind-the-scenes tours, rare tastings, meet-and-greets with master distillers, and exclusive parties with your fellow bourbon aficionados. The Kentucky Distillers’ Association, the operators and organizers of the annual event, came to us to help them promote this year’s event on digital, building awareness and driving ticket sales.

The Goal

Promote the 2017 Kentucky Bourbon Affair by building excitement and driving ticket sales through digital advertising campaigns and a series of e-blasts.

The Plan

We built up the strategy for this campaign using every tool in our digital arsenal, starting with a series of eblasts sent out before ticket sales even started. At the same time, we built up the Kentucky Bourbon Affair database through targeted Facebook ads aimed at bourbon obsessives who wanted to learn more about this incredible event. We built a custom landing page to collect leads, then turned around and used those leads to further target the next phases of the campaign. Once ticket sales launched, we drove sales through a multi-pronged approach that included branded and non-branded paid search ads and two types of Facebook ads to target bourbon enthusiasts.

The Results

Of the 43 events that make up this year’s Bourbon Affair, 17 sold out nearly a month before. Additionally, the coveted Bourbon Affair Golden Tickets—which entitle the bearer to first dibs on the most exclusive events, as well as special concierge service—sold out almost immediately. Those ticket sales were strengthened by the 2,595 leads we gathered through our Phase I campaign, more than doubling the size of the Kentucky Bourbon Affair database. These leads allowed us to target this year’s ticket advertising even more efficiently, and they’re helping us build an even stronger foundation for next year’s event marketing.