We harnessed the power of engagement and collaboration to make sure the 25th National Multicultural Festival was a commercial success for local businesses.
While the National Multicultural Festival is one of the biggest events held in the Canberra City Centre each year, recently local businesses have seen a drop in sales over the three day-event as festival goers focus on pop-up food and entertainment. This tension between this wonderful community event and local businesses in the city was not conducive to long term success of the National Multicultural Festival.
In 2023 Communication Link engaged with more than 200 businesses in the City and Braddon to explore opportunities to better integrate local businesses into the activities of the Festival and help ensure the benefit of so many visitors was shared across the city.
Working with local businesses we explored opportunities for individual business to create special offers for the Festival that could then be promoted as part of the broader Festival promotion .
Thirty local businesses partnered with us to develop enticing single-use offers, encouraging the more than 350,000 festival goers to make ‘a local business part of their trip to the festival’.
This outcome was enhanced by the development of tailored communication artefacts to help these businesses promote their offers during the Festival.
Post event feedback is being used to inform enhancements to this program to strengthen the benefits of the National Multicultural Festival to city-based businesses.