By the time the contract was signed, and money was in the bank, The Digital Marketing Agency only had two weeks and three days to market a Hollywood Virtual Benefit Concert for New Year’s Eve that competed with the Times Square Ball Drop, stated Mike Galindo, founder, and CEO of The Digital Marketing Agency.
Galindo and his team pulled it off.
“We went from nothing to successfully marketing a virtual New Year’s Eve concert with all these celebrities,” Galindo said. “Can you imagine marketing something that large so quickly?”
The event, The Unity Concert Series “Together We Vibe” New Year’s Eve 2021 Ball Drop, included Snoop Dogg, Jordin Sparks, Warren G, Estelle, and several other celebrity artists. The Digital Marketing Agency also successfully ran the campaign for $40,000 – just half of Mike’s asking price. The Dec. 31, 2020, concert was broadcast from the Hollywood Hard Rock Cafe. The agency did the campaign as Tu Bachata Radio.
Every part of the marketing campaign was first to run past Galindo. Even though someone else made the logo, he consulted on it throughout its creation. “I was very much a part of every aspect of the marketing,” he commented. The Digital Marketing Agency developed with an inbound marketing strategy as well as an outbound marketing strategy for a complete marketing plan. They came up with intelligent objectives and set goals for the event. Further, the agency gained a social media following for the series, which resulted in ticket sales. Galindo and his team were responsible for every aspect of the campaign, including using artificial intelligence, content creation, social media marketing, Google advertising, display advertising, and advertising in the affiliate section of the major news networks. “Our responsibility was everything from initiation to execution and closing,” Galindo said. He also used a market research report, Google data and analytics, and Facebook data and analytics. “I didn’t want to guess on anything,” Galindo asserted. “I wanted to make sure everything was backed by data. Was it overkill? Probably. But I would rather do that, than be an average, ordinary marketing company. The marketing plan was probably the most comprehensive plan we’ve ever done for a client.” Six non-profit organizations were the benefactor.
Because the agency had just 17 days to market the event, they had to get the word out as soon as possible. Thus, they conducted market research and collected data, using that information to come up with a marketing campaign. In creating the content for marketing the concert, Galindo found the keywords for the marketing and incorporated them into the campaign. His marketing copy didn’t need to be approved, other than assuring that Snoop Dogg would be called DJ Snoopadelic. “That was his one request,” Galindo remarked.
The Digital Marketing Agency used Google insights and consolidated Instagram accounts to be automatically established. The agency ran a Facebook page, building up from zero followers. They did virtual event statistic reports and manual market research of competitors. Galindo and his team did audience research to understand the target market. The agency did its best due diligence to find the right market research company to use, identifying eMarketer as the best company for digital marketing and events.
The Digital Marketing Agency wanted to understand the brand voice of Live Nation Entertainment, an American global entertainment company, and how they communicated to their audience. So after Galindo considered all the methods, he and his team looked at Facebook audience insights, data aggregation tools; a report from eMarketer; a virtual event statistics report; and manual market research of competitors by looking at copywriting and imaging from Live Nation. “We wanted to get an idea of how they were positioning their brand, how they communicated to their audience, and what we wanted to do,” Galindo said.
With the concert’s immediate competitor being the Times Square Ball Drop, which also did a virtual event on Dec. 31, 2020, due to COVID-19, The Digital Marketing Agency used half of the $40,000 it was given for marketing purposes. The agency used Eventbrite for its ticketing, finding the company to be the best option for ticket sales. Essentially, the campaign on which The Digital Marketing Agency was running, was “Wondering what to do for your New Year’s Eve Celebration? We have you covered!” Galindo exclaimed. “We were piggybacking off ‘What are you going to do for New Year’s this year, given the pandemic?’” he added. “It was the idea of ‘it’s all about the pandemic this year’ and the Times Square Ball Drop is only virtual. Here’s another option – and we are doing it online with superstars.
The Digital Marketing Agency looked at specific demographics on New Year’s Eve celebrations from more than one information provider. Further, Galindo pulled all of the high-performing keywords on Google search results to see what folks were looking for when seeking a New Year’s Eve party, using the top twenty keywords. “The keywords that people were looking for, we used them in our marketing copy,” he said. Finally, the agency was precise in tracking their spending by charting expenditures with detailed breakdowns on how money was spent.
Acquiring a project of limited time on such a small budget was a huge undertaking. Galindo “was handed a football and unreasonably told to find a way to go the length of the field for a touchdown,” he said. But with everything that seemed to make it impossible for him to make the campaign happen, he went for it anyway and was successful. “To be honest, there was no direction,” he said, adding that he “100%” created the entire angle of the campaign and how it was positioned. “There was no marketing campaign. I came up with it and gave it to the Unity Concert Series. They loved it and I said, ‘Let’s go!’”
The main reason Galindo overcame the challenge was due to his immense creativity. He loves marketing and is good at it – he considers himself an expert. When he was given the project, he thought about how there was nothing to do due to the pandemic. “I thought, “this is how I can help people. People are suffering. This is a chance to make a difference in the world,” Galindo said. “And there were the non-profits’ missions as well.”
Always starting a campaign by asking what the problem is, Galindo recognized that folks had nothing to do on New Year’s Eve 2020, being on lockdown and scared of getting COVID-19 and festivals were closed. So Mike ran with the project once it was put in his lap – and it “blew up” by the time he and his team were done with it, he said. Nevertheless, Galindo is proud of every aspect of it – getting the contract, successfully working with the time frame, working with an organization more prominent than he had ever worked with before, successfully managing the first time someone dumped an entire project on him and told him to run with it. Further, Galindo wasn’t “just pushing buttons and running ads,” but was involved with consulting for a large basis of the campaign, he said. “I’m in shock that we were even part of the event, and I’m grateful I was. It’s nuts – I had a project directly competing with the New York ball drop,” said Galindo, noting that he has a video of Snoop Dogg singing on stage at the Hard Rock Cafe.
“Thinking about creating it all over again, ‘Holy crap; I can’t believe we did that.’ It’s unbelievable to say you did something like that,” Galindo divulged.
The Unity Concert Series was a newly formed non-profit organization by Graham Brooks, the owner of a southern California company called The Yoga Collective.
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