The Overview

Rolling Out is an African-American focused media outlet that provides content centered around celebrity news, entertainment, business and politics. In 2017, the media outlet launched it’s inaugural Rolling Out Innovation Digital Entertainment Conference (aka RIDE Con), assembling some of the most influential minds in media, business, and technology to empower the next generation of digital leaders through a series of interactive micro-lectures, workshops and breakout sessions.

The Challenge

Our challenge was to produce and manage the overall branding, promotions, and production for the 2nd Annual RIDE Conference within 45 Days. (You read that right, 45 Days! ?)

The Solution

I had the pleasure of leading a team of 20 on one of the most challenging yet rewarding projects I've worked on to date. Check out the breakdown...

STRATEGY
We worked hand and hand with Rolling Out’s production team to create a robust integrated marketing strategy to attract, acquire, and engage potential attendees throughout the entire customer journey. See strategy thesis below:

“If we target the audience of featured speakers – multicultural millennials ages 25 – 35 who are entrepreneurial minded, tech savvy, and actively engaged with pop-culture – then we can utilize influencer marketing tactics to build awareness and increase ticket sales by 15% for RIDE Con 2018”

DIGITAL
Copywriting:
Taking the media outlet’s rich history of being a trusted voice in the African-American community, we crafted a tailored mission statement for the conference along with the overall brand messaging on all digital channels and promotional assets to communicate the value of attending the two-day experience.

Branding & Design:
To embody the mission we crafted a beautifully designed theme for the conference which consisted of 3 color patterns: Red (Representing Rollingout’s brand color), Blue (Symbolizing Innovation), and Purple (Merging entertainment and culture or Red & Blue).

Web Design:
We brought the designs to life by developing the conference’s landing page and event page to align with the theme and encourage visitors to purchase passes.

Social Media
Making sure the conferences theme was consistent across all digital channels, we set up social media channels and management tools for the RIDE Conference and launched a paid ad campaign targeting the followers of featured speakers on Facebook & Instagram paired with an organic campaign were we created promotional graphics for each speaker to share with their network.

Email Campaign
To engage Rolling Out’s already established large network and following we developed an engaging email marketing campaign to invite over 125K to RIDE. Check out the email HERE.

Survies
To capture qualitative data from attendees, we created and distributed a pre-event survey to understand attendees expectations to curate valuable sessions during the course of the conference and a post-event survey to hear immediate feedback to improve next years experience.

EXPERIENTIAL
Event Management
Our team constructed the agenda and run-of-show for the two-day conference while curating breakout sessions which included coming up with session topics, hand-selecting speakers, and communicating with speakers to brief them on their session topics while encouraging them to promote the conference to their network.

Production
On September 28-29, 2018 at the Loudermilk Conference Center in Atlanta, Georgia, we alongside the Rolling Out team produced a weekend packed of entertainment, education, and influence from Check-in and Audio/Visual all the way to speaker reception and live social media contests ensuring the attendees had the best experience possible.

The Results

Increased Ticket Sales by 107%
Return on Investment (ROI): 164%
Impressions: 349,529
Reach: 187,101