The Power of User-Generated Content: How West Edge Collective Took Cheyenne Frontier Days to the Next Level
Cheyenne Frontier Days has been around since 1897, so its promoters know their event and its fans well. The 10-day festival has a long legacy of moments made for sharing: Cowboys racing around the arena in the world’s largest outdoor rodeo, kiddos decked out in Western wear petting farm animals, and concerts after dark that rock music fans from around the country.
So this year, the festival’s agency, West Edge Collective, leveraged the excitement that the 200,000-plus attendees have for this celebration into five user-directed videos for social distribution. Using Cinebody, the agency collected over 800 clips from more than 180 attendees (from 13 states!), then quickly edited the footage into polished, almost-live videos that Cheyenne Frontier Days shared on their social channels while the festival was still happening.
To build excitement about filming their festival experience through Cinebody, West Edge Collective promoted the activation on the festival’s social channels, offered VIP perks & other incentives, and developed a landing page for attendees to see what others had helped create. They even had announcers at the rodeo events remind people to film on the app.
The five videos that the agency produced pulled in tens of thousands of views on Facebook and hundreds of shares, plus through-the-roof engagement from fans searching for and tagging friends and family they spotted in the videos. In fact, the final event recap video of the festival drew 33,000 views and 70 comments - including some from fans already talking about next year’s event.
The videos shared by fans on the Cheyenne Frontier Days App captured the true essence of the Wild West and kept the excitement of the event going throughout. Thanks to the success of their campaign, West Edge Collective now has an advantage in promoting next year's festival, as they already have a wealth of authentic footage at their disposal.
Berner said that “There are hundreds of clips from the activation of Cheyenne Frontier Days concerts 2019 that they didn't even touch yet”. With this wealth of authentic footage, West Edge Collective is now well-prepared to promote next year's festival, giving them a head start on their promotional strategies.
