AWARD WINNER: The Enchanted Forest – Oir an Uisge

The Enchanted Forest community trust is the force behind Scotland’s premier sound and light show, The Enchanted Forest. A firmly established, award winning, tourist attraction which takes place every Autumn in Faskally Wood, Perthshire, the event has succeeded in drawing tens of thousands of visitors to Highland Perthshire over the years, bringing in more than £1 million to the local economy annually. Volpa has overseen its marketing for more than ten years.

Despite the record-breaking box office success of the 2016 event which was a sell out within just a few days, for the 2017 event to be a success and profitable, an integrated approach was required to align the marketing campaign with pre-planned adjustments to ticket pricing.

The brief received from the Enchanted Forest Community trust was as follows:

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Increase yield per ticket to deliver a profitable event.

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Balance creating a media plan that was worthy of the scale of the event, with minimising wastage in the likely event that very few tickets would be available to purchase at peak demand times.

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Ensure that the public messaging set a realistic expectation that The Enchanted Forest would sell out.

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Enhance the show’s positioning as a family event that gives back to its community.

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Through some in-depth research, it was identified that the speed of ticket sales had increased in recent years, so a new sales and marketing strategy was implemented that reflected this change. Volpa ensured that messaging about speed of ticket sales was clear, unambiguous and created an urgency to purchase; whilst ensuring the key period of ticket buying for the public was carefully managed so expectations weren’t heightened at a time when ticket stocks and availability were dwindling. In addition, core messaging was focused on the good that the event does for the local economy, for charity and the local community.

The integrated campaign implemented by Volpa also included a redeveloped paid for media strategy which achieved a solid presence on a reduced budget;  and a strategic PR campaign centred around the search for ‘The Voice’ – a child who would record the safety message played on all the buses that transport people to the event, which would be heard by 72,000 visitors. This was backed by an agile digital media strategy across the events’ own digital platforms, as well as third party platforms such as Itison.