Masters of Hardcore is an annual event that takes place in the Brabanthallen in Den Bosch, and is one of the largest hardcore parties in The Netherlands. The event draws a global audience, indicating its widespread appeal and significance within the hardcore music scene. Given the competitive landscape, with several other events vying for the same audience, our strategy needed to be as impactful and targeted as possible.

Recognizing the dedication and enthusiasm of the hardcore music audience, we aimed to capitalize on a strategic opportunity for visibility. We chose the day of a major competing hardcore festival in Utrecht, which is known for having the largest train station in The Netherlands, as the focal point for our campaign. The campaign was based on the understanding that a significant portion of the festival-goers would be using the train for transportation, thereby presenting a prime opportunity for high-impact visibility.

To maximize our reach and engagement, we focused our Digital Out of Home (DOOH) advertising efforts in and around Utrecht Central Station. The ads were strategically placed to capture the attention of festival attendees as they arrived in the evening and again when they were leaving. This approach ensured that our messaging was one of the first and last impressions made on this captive audience during their festival experience.

The campaign led to significant achievements in terms of visibility and audience engagement:

Our DOOH ads were displayed across 43 unique screens in and around Utrecht Central Station, ensuring broad coverage and repeated exposure to attendees traveling to and from the festival.

The campaign generated over 154,000 impressions, indicating a high level of visibility among the target audience. This level of exposure underscores the effectiveness of our strategic placement and timing, aligning our messaging with the audience’s movements and behaviors during a key competitive event.

This case illustrates the power of strategic DOOH advertising in reaching and engaging a highly targeted audience. By leveraging key insights into audience behavior and competitor events, Masters of Hardcore was able to achieve remarkable visibility and make a lasting impression on its target demographic.

Our customers are different every time. Advertisers selling the exact same products can turn out to need a very different approach due to different margins, different secondary USPs, different setups of marketing teams, and different levels of online savviness. That’s why for each customer, but also for each project within the customers’ organisation, we create a custom plan, every time.

First we’ll need to understand the customers’ organisation and the objectives. By making them quantifiable, we will understand what the boundaries are of how to ‘play the online game’. Then we will dive into your data to understand the current situation and look for opportunities. In order to come up with the right (branding) strategy.

We believe that if both sides – the customer and we as the agency – bring their knowledge to the table, we can make the most successful strategies. That is why we need to get to know each other very well, have clear success metrics in place, we need to zoom out regularly, and always keep an open conversation.

Do you think we can help you to get the most out of your online activities? Feel free to drop us a line. Because we are looking forward to getting to know you!

Weather relevance: we made sure the ads were only visible on the screens during sunny days, aligning with the mood for an outdoor festival.

Our strategy was based on targeting two crucial audience groups: nightlife enthusiasts and university students. Based on primary data we chose seven different cities in Germany and the Netherlands to focus on. To increase the relevance, we selected specific areas containing bars, clubs and terrasses. These nightlife hotspots were targeted on weekend nights (Thursdays – Sundays), while screens on or close to universities lit up on weekdays, connecting with students. We selected premium urban panels, which are visible on the street level and reach city dwellers in, usually, dense city areas.   

And, we added a secret ingredient to top it all off: weather relevance. The campaign became more alluring when we made sure the ads were only visible on the screens during sunny days, aligning with the mood for an outdoor festival.

All in all, our use of data, the strategic timing, audience focus, and weather timing resulted in a strong campaign to boost awareness and excitement for PAROOKAVILLE while making most efficient use of budgets. The combination of our DOOH strategy with other digital marketing efforts, like Meta and Google campaigns resulted in an increase of at least 50% of branded search volume in every targeted DOOH city. For us, this showcases the importance of the role DOOH can play in an omnichannel approach to reach the audience both online and offline with a personalized and relevant message.

Our customers are different every time. Advertisers selling the exact same products can turn out to need a very different approach due to different margins, different secondary USPs, different setups of marketing teams, and different levels of online savviness. That’s why for each customer, but also for each project within the customers’ organisation, we create a custom plan, every time.

First we’ll need to understand the customers’ organisation and the objectives. By making them quantifiable, we will understand what the boundaries are of how to ‘play the online game’. Then we will dive into your data to understand the current situation and look for opportunities. In order to come up with the right (branding) strategy.

We believe that if both sides – the customer and we as the agency – bring their knowledge to the table, we can make the most successful strategies. That is why we need to get to know each other very well, have clear success metrics in place, we need to zoom out regularly, and always keep an open conversation.

Do you think we can help you to get the most out of your online activities? Feel free to drop us a line. Because we are looking forward to getting to know you!

The livestream served as a means to put PAROOKAVILLE on the map among the fans of those international artists.

Overall, the livestream was a tremendous success with 5.7 million viewers (combined Facebook and website) and over 210,000 new visitors to the parookaville.com website. This also had a significant boost on ticket sales in the first month: 462% more tickets sold than the previous year. The goal of attracting more international visitors was achieved, generating 542% more revenue from outside Germany. Utilising a livestream is a fantastic marketing tool to reach new target audiences and inspire them to purchase tickets. Are you considering live streaming your event and need assistance with its promotion? Contact us!

At Hide and Seek, we don’t stick to a so-called ‘normal’. We don’t have strict times, deadlines or means of communication – we just stick to ourselves and of course…to our customers.

Just like us, our customers are always different too. Advertisers selling the exact same products can turn out to need a very different approach due to different margins, different secondary USPs, different setups of marketing teams, and different levels of online savviness. That’s why for each customer we make a custom plan – every time again.

In addition to a custom approach, it’s important to make success quantifiable. Before we start with campaigns, we decide what success means in terms of numbers so that we’re on the exact same page when it comes to evaluating the results at the end of the month, week, and day.

In this case you can read about a successful cooperation between Milkshake Festival and Hide and Seek, since 2016.

We have realised the growth by choosing a multi-channel strategy by translating offline and organic social marketing efforts to online. We have successfully increased ticket sales year by year, by targeting the right messages to the right audiences at the right time. Milkshake’s 2022 edition was fully sold out in the record time of one hour.

Despite the massive growth, the main objective was and always will be to educate everyone what Milkshake Festival stands for: for all who love. This powerful message has been the key for all online ads we have served. With this we have been able to create durable and lasting growth, by combining this powerful message and our strategic online marketing knowledge.

We have worked closely together with Milkshake festival to steadily grow the audience in a durable way. Each year we break record sales, by selecting the right channels, targeting the right audiences, and testing with various ad types to show the best results. With several editions in Amsterdam and also Sao Paulo already behind us, we are looking positively to the future to work on many more great campaigns to spread more love.

Our customers are different every time. Advertisers selling the exact same products can turn out to need a very different approach due to different margins, different secondary USPs, different setups of marketing teams, and different levels of online savviness. That’s why for each customer, but also for each project within the customers’ organisation, we create a custom plan, every time.

First we’ll need to understand the customers’ organisation and the objectives. By making them quantifiable, we will understand what the boundaries are of how to ‘play the online game’. Then we will dive into your data to understand the current situation and look for opportunities. In order to come up with the right (branding) strategy.

We believe that if both sides – the customer and we as the agency – bring their knowledge to the table, we can make the most successful strategies. That is why we need to get to know each other very well, have clear success metrics in place, we need to zoom out regularly, and always keep an open conversation.

Do you think we can help you to get the most out of your online activities? Feel free to drop us a line. Because we are looking forward to getting to know you!