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Festa Italiana is the biggest Italian festival in Britain, organised by Manchester-favourites Salvi’s. Taking after traditional Italian festivals, it was inspired by Manchester’s Italian community and heritage, celebrating Italian food, drink and culture.
Now in its fifth year, Festa Italiana treated festival goers to the authentic spirit of Italy, transforming the city’s Cathedral Gardens into a real Festival Piazza, welcoming much-loved Italian chefs and award-winning authors, local street food vendors and a variety of activities, encapsulating the togetherness of Italian festivals.
We created an engaging and informative social media campaign, for the much-loved Italian festival, aiming to increase account engagement and reach, while simultaneously growing followers and awareness of the Festa Italiana brand.
Our role was to encapsulate and translate the authentic spirit of Italy within our social media posts in the build up, during and after the event, while coordinating the overall strategy and making sure to represent all strands of the festival and each of the food vendors, performers, partners and celebrity guests.
Collaborative Instagram posts were key to raising the profile of the Festa Italiana brand. We created and executed posts with the chefs during the festival line-up announcement, growing the festival’s online presence, with a substantial increase in post reach and engagement. We also collaborated with each of the local street food vendors, which helped us to reach a valuable, targeted North West audience who would be likely to attend the event.
Bearing in mind the longevity and significance of Reels, we created a series featuring the celebrity chefs and vendors during the festival. These posts have reached over 157k accounts, and are continuing to grow in the weeks following the event. A shoutout Reel with Great British Bake Off 2021 winner Giuseppe Dell’Anno has been viewed over 52k times, while a Reel of legendary Italian chef Gennaro Contaldo has been seen close to 100k times, bringing immense exposure to the festival’s social media pages.
Working from the festival site throughout the event we were reactive to live posting significant moments throughout the festival both on stories and the grid. This was key to engaging our audience, increasing footfall and spreading a welcoming message in the name of Festa Italiana.
Simultaneously we managed the festival founder Salvi’s social channels to complement the Festa Italiana social activity, representing the team’s presence at the event with video messages from Maurizio Cecco and highlights from their own masterclass and deli products stand.
We briefed photographer and videographer Si Ronconi, to deliver a variety of content, which we combined with the visually engaging and colour-coded brand elements, to create stories, each of which has been viewed between 500 and 1,000 times. We made use of the “Add Yours” sticker, further helping to engage festival visitors in sharing their favourite moments, making for a brilliant user-generated content.
We created a bank of video and photo content to roll out strategically in the month following the festival, and ready to ramp up activity again ahead of the 2023 edition.
