Dubbo Dream Festival

Dubbo Dream Festival is an annual event, run over three weeks from 13-23 October, celebrating creativity in all forms – music, performance, dance and light! This year’s event included a large-scale lighting installation, lanterns, food and beverage, music, markets and art competitions. The festival had been traditionally managed by a group from the community, however, this year the festival was shifted into the Council’s management and moved to a new slot on the calendar, in October 2022, outside of school holidays. 

Dubbo Regional Council engaged Milestone to develop a Tourism Strategy, which was presented in September 2022. Running alongside this was a rebrand, reflecting the location and the shift to large-scale lighting installations, which was applied across outdoor and digital signage and a digital campaign aimed at driving attendance from visitors out of the Dubbo region.
Challenges:

• Post-covid consumer behaviour changes
• Reaching and educating new audiences outside of the Dubbo region about the festival
• Relatively small budget

Tourism event marketing strategy with key campaign messages that will evolve over the next three years as the event develops into a tourism opportunity. 

Rebrand – Drawing from the existing palette as a visual tie-in as the event was 20+ years and loved by the community. We added neon pops to reflect a stronger shift to illuminate. 

Social Media Grid was curated with a style guide and visuals loaded to Canva so the client could create campaign tiles, making the event’s social media more visually appealing, organised and professional. Tiles were designed around 5 pillars including brand, signature events, secondary events, Dubbo experience and artists/program.

Website was updated with a more creative theme, layout and visual identity. View the website here. 

Signage and digital assets were designed using the new branding.

Digital campaign – Our digital team developed content, managed budget and optimisation of a paid digital advertising campaign across Meta Business, targeting out-of-town locations including Sydney, Central Coast, Wollongong, Newcastle and Canberra. We set up the campaign with custom creative and messaging around key tourism audiences being; drives market, visiting friends & family (VFR), grey nomads, young active families and affluent urbanites.