OPEN
Brand Launch & Event  Ticket Sales Campaign 

Client: OPEN

Project: Marketing Strategy and Execution

Sector: Events &Live Music

URL: https://openhousemusic.events

 

Overview

Flourish partnered with OPEN, a new grassroots events promotion with a clear ambition to bring respected artists who typically only play in more culturally diverse cities to smaller regional towns. The aim was to build a sustainable nightlife community/culture and create opportunities for audiences and aspiring artists outside of major cities. This work aligned closely with our strategic values and with our director’s longstanding involvement in the grass roots music community.

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The climate for new event promoters is difficult. By 2025, around a quarter of UK late-night venues had closed since 2020 as reported on by the Guardian newspaper. Many operators were facing rising costs, lower footfall and uncertainty across the sector. The team behind OPEN needed a marketing approach that was efficient, commercially cautious and built for long-term stability.

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Strategic Objectives

After some initial discovery led discussions, the OPEN team set two key priorities.
 

• First, maintain strict control of costs in a fragile market.

• Second, drive advance ticket sales to reduce financial risk.

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From this, the Flourish team designed a clear, data-led strategy. This focused on building the right foundations by identifying and warming local audiences and ensuring that each stage of spend contributed directly to performance.

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Building the Growth Engine from Zero

New brands often struggle because paid ad platforms rely on data. Without data signals, algorithms cannot optimise. Our first step was to put the correct infrastructure in place to test and make sure this data is being captured & recorded.

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This included:
 

• Full Meta Pixel deployment and event tracking setup

• Clean tagging across landing pages and ticketing sites

• Testing of Event data passed accurately into Meta for learning and optimisation.
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This initial work ensured that every impression or page view supported future performance.

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Localised Audience Strategy

The initial launch event was to be held at the well known live music venue 'The Craufurd Arms' in Wolverton, Milton Keynes. We initially focused audience targeting on a 50 km radius of the venue to keep the audience defined and relevant.

Early campaigns centred on brand awareness, engagement and first-party data capture. These included lead generation activity and organic social posts to establish a recognisable identity for the brand. Some of these organic posts were bolstered with small 'boosted' budgets over a week or so to keep them in potential customer feeds for longer. This wasn't to replace core ad campaigns but to instead supplement them and drive data signals.

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As the event approached and the dataset grew, we shifted to clearer calls to action within ads & organic posts. Spend increased within Meta where performance signals were strongest.

An important key advantage came from the ticketing platfrom's Fatsoma Pixel integration. This allowed us to track purchase behaviour, build retargeting audiences from user behaviour on Fatsoma's website and measure the full funnel in a way that is rare for small-scale events.

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Creative Strategy and Scroll-Stopping Formats

Awareness campaigns relied heavily on Reels. These formats provided movement, sound and fast brand recognition. Reels were built using animated graphics that featured the OPEN logo, headliner imagery, artist name treatments and music licensed from the performing artists. This all helped to break user doom-scrolling behaviour and increased the likelihood of engagement.

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Reels ran alongside still-image campaigns distributed through Meta Advantage+ placements. These dynamic and AI driven placements helped the platform deliver ads across the most effective surfaces, including Feeds, Stories and Reels from a single campaign.

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TikTok activity was kept minimal. The platform offered limited local targeting, which made it less suitable for a micro-event. Aside from a few organic Reel-style posts, we advised that paid spend remain focused on Meta via Instagram and Facebook. This kept the budget efficient and maintained frequency within a concentrated local audience.

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Optimisation Approach

Our method followed a simple structure.
 

• First, broad awareness to condition the local market.

• Second, warm audience nurturing using Reels, still images and retargeting pools.

• Third, purchase-focused messaging in the final weeks.

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Budgets were adjusted in short cycles. We monitored impressions, reach and frequency to ensure balanced delivery. Audiences and creative assets were refined as learning built, which kept the small budget working effectively.

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Commercial Results

Despite limited spend and no historical data, the event reached its performance targets.
 

The campaign delivered a ROAS of approximately 3, or 300%. Modest compared to typical eCommerce performance driven campaigns, but in the context of such micro-budgets and localised audience targeting, very respectful!

Importantly, advance tickets sold strongly with over 60% of the event pre-sold via advanced tickets. This gave the promoter financial confidence and reduced the risk associated with launching a new brand in such a challenging environment.

This percentage of pre-paid tickets is continually increasing with each event. This is in part to the audience growth tactics and targeting strategies creating repetition and brand familiarity. In only 12 months, awareness has increased immeasurably from a cold start of nothing to attendee's buying tickets months in advance of an event, as soon as it is announced.

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Why This Matters

This project reflects the core values of Flourish. Good marketing does not always have to depend on large budgets. Typically we would advise on spending no less than £3k per channel, per month as an absolute minimum in the eCommerce product driven space. It is refreshing though to work on these smaller scale campaigns and test our experiences and strategies in their raw & purest formats.

Even when large budgets are available, success always depends on strategy, clear execution and commercial discipline. Many emerging brands or retailers feel intimidated by digital marketing. Our aim is to show that with the right structure, smaller businesses can achieve meaningful and repeatable results that can be scaled to drive real measurable growth.

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The OPEN model of event promotion is now more resilient. The framework created during this launch can be repeated and used for future shows and refined as the brand grows.

 

Our Commitment to Culture and Community

Flourish continues to support OPEN through strategic advisory and ongoing financial sponsorship. This reflects the attitude of our leadership team and our belief that businesses should contribute positively to local culture and community where possible.

 

We are committed to supporting grassroots talent, emerging promoters and the cultural spaces that create opportunity in smaller towns. This is not common for a consultancy of our size, yet it is central to how we think, operate and how we measure our long-term impact outside of typical business metrics.