ShareRib America Festival 2010
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Client: Indianapolis-based Festival Partners LLC runs the annual four-day Labor Day event Rib America Festival. The event is a barbeque and music festival that celebrated its most successful year in 2010. The 15th annual Rib America Festival featured 10 barbeque masters from across the U.S. and performances by Bret Michaels, Collective Soul, Ted Nugent and more.
Challenge: The festival is an annual tradition in Indianapolis. Every year, we must find new angles to entice the general public and the media to attend and cover the event.
Solution: At Bohlsen Group, we pride ourselves on being able to secure new and interesting ways to spread the word about an event. For the Rib America Festival, we issued releases that focused on general event information, entertainment, fun festival facts and two reminders, as well as festival highlights and attractions. Then, we arranged in-studio and on-site media coverage that featured performers and rib cookers; Bohlsen Group also delivered ribs and event promotional materials to area media outlets and assisted with radio coverage the first morning of the event. We worked with a local TV meteorologist to issue an “Aroma Warning” to hit the viewers that tune in for the weather report. We also garnered coverage of an iPhone app called iRib on the market’s biggest radio station (and prime target audience), and of the free Breyers Ice Cream and Kids Zone. On a grassroots level, we implemented a targeted street promotions campaign that hit hotel concierges, downtown stores within walking distance, music stores, novelty shops and more. Finally, BohlsenPR helped steer a social media and online campaign for the festival. The social media campaign included strategic promotional giveaways with Smaller Indiana, a Twitter strategy and behind-the-scenes access on Rib America’s official Facebook page.
Results: Multiple live and in-studio TV and radio appearances, including Indy Style, and local NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX affiliates. Print coverage included an entertainment section cover story in the Indianapolis Star and a feature in MetroMix, and a four-page pull-out section in NUVO. We also secured outer-market features in the Chicago Sun-Times, Southwest Airlines’ Spirit Magazine and others. The online campaign included feature coverage on various websites and in e-newsletters such as the Indianapolis Business Journal, Indianapolis Downtown Inc. and Indy’s Child. Coverage related to the iRib app resulted in more than 1,800 votes by attendees for their favorite rib cooker. Together, all this attention resulted in the highest-attended Rib America Festival ever.
Crisis communications: Once the event was over, Bohlsen Group received word that an attendee had e-mailed several local media outlets claiming a problem with something a performer had allegedly said during the event. We immediately contacted the performer’s PR contact and various media outlets to learn all we could about the issue and share what we knew with our media contacts. We consulted with Rib America representatives and worked with the media on a proper resolution to their inquiries.