Corporate Partnerships

Business Benefits

Connect with your customers or business networks through a partnership with Sydney Festival, the largest annual arts event in Australia.

The Festival celebrates summer, art and life in Sydney, engaging with large audiences and diverse artists across the city and beyond, presenting a tremendous platform for branding and activation.

In 2011, Sydney Festival worked with a large community of sponsors from a wide range of industries resulting in more than $8.5M in cash and in-kind revenue.

We invite you to start a new partnership or to build on your experience in 2011 by collaborating with us through:

• Positive brand alignment
• Access to a loyal, educated audience
• Broad media coverage
• Recognition across an extensive marketing campaign
• Bespoke leverage opportunities
• Product placement and sales rights
• Measurement and research tools
• Access to influential corporate and government stakeholders
• Exceptional corporate hospitality

We are a comprehensive business solution and our award-winning business development team is committed to helping you achieve solid returns on any investment in the Festival.

Key Properties & Opportunities

In 2011 almost 1 million people enjoyed the Festival program across three weeks in January.

The free program continued to draw large audiences.

• Festival First Night continued to be a tremendous success drawing crowds in excess of 200,000 to the city.
• The Domain Concert Series - Summer Sounds and Symphony - attracted up to 60,000 people each night with many arriving early afternoon to secure a prime spot on the field to watch show in the evening. 
• The Festival Bar at Hyde Park Barracks attracted almost 16,000 people.
• Festival Garden was extended to a 4 week season with 39,000 people revelling in the magical Hyde Park setting.
• Ferrython on Australia Day saw four sponsor ferries battle it out for line honours under the Harbour Bridge, and attracted hundreds of thousands of spectator vessels and groups along the harbour foreshore.

These and other iconic Festival events present dynamic ways for sponsors to connect with consumers via advertising on The Domain big screens, product sampling and sales, promotional giveaways, bespoke activation and corporate hospitality.

Venues and the ticketed program are also available for sponsorship and present opportunities for signage, bespoke on-ground activation, ticket offers and corporate hospitality.

Online display advertising and integration across our social media channels, mobile phone application and Festival TV episodes are other exciting opportunities.

Audience Profile

Sydney Festival conducted a visitor survey across a number of events, both ticketed and free, at the 2011 Festival. The survey was undertaken both online and in face-to-face interviews, yielding around 1,500 responses.

Of the respondees, 17% of visitors to the Festival described themselves as living outside of Sydney. An estimate of 12,000 unique overseas visitors attended Festival events.

In other demographic data gleaned from the survey results, the largest age bracket represented were 25-34 year olds (roughly 27%). 45-64 year olds were also well represented, making up 38% of Festival attendees. The majority of the audiences also attended with friends or in groups perceiving the events to be a social occasion.

We are able to work with you to ensure your company is aligned with your target market to maximise your sponsorship success.

Measuring Effectiveness

Sydney Festival works with Woolcott Research, Datalicious and other partners to develop our annual qualitative and quantitative research projects.

We are keenly aware that our partners deserve evidence that their investment is working. To assist the Festival in providing our sponsors with comprehensive evaluation of their sponsorship, a proportion of the questions asked in our surveys are focused on the effectiveness of sponsor activities and overall sponsor recall.

Marketing

The Festival offers an extremely broad reaching, strategic, 3 month campaign from launch in early November to the conclusion of the Festival in January. Marketing vehicles include print, outdoor, website, social media, radio and television. 2011 highlights include:

• 350,000 brochures and 43,000 pocket guides
• 700,000 Sunday Telegraph Sydney Festival guides, 700,000 Sunday Telegraph Festival First Night features and almost 390,000 Sydney Festival highlight supplements in The Weekend Australian distributed nationally by long standing and valued partner, News Limited
• 717 street flags, 11 APN Tribe billboards, 78 APN Buspaks, 540 JCDecaux street furniture posters and 160 Rova taxi backs
• 238,891 views of video content on YouTube driven by the new Festival TV channel 
• 50,000 eNewsletter subscribers, double year on year
• 14,450 Facebook fans & 13,200 Twitter followers
• Targeted advertising on FBi radio and a range of mentions, competitions and artist interview on both FBi and ABC Radio
• Almost 700 spots on Channel 9 (Melbourne) and GO! (National) from November to January
• More than 6,800 screenings on Qantas domestic in-flight entertainment and during international flight news bulletins in January

Contact

Each sponsor is unique, and each partnership has a unique value. Our experienced business development team will work with you to develop campaigns that achieve win-win outcomes.

Planning for 2012 is well underway and there are many significant properties available for partnership. For further information on how your brand can be integrated into Sydney Festival 2012 and to obtain a full 2011 report, please contact Jessica Flood, Business Development Coordinator on (02) 8248 6511 or at jessica.flood@sydneyfestival.org.au