Submitted by Oust

Wall Street Journal Future of Everything Festival Creator Preview

Influencer Marketing

Oust brought tastemakers to preview The Future of Everything Festival for The Wall Street Journal, reporting 70K impressions and the first sold-out conference admission in the festival's run.

60KViews
70KImpressions

Case in 60 seconds

The Wall Street Journal needed to reach New Yorkers interested in every topic The Future of Everything Festival covered, which meant finding audiences in food, environmentalism, technology and health at once rather than one interest group.

The work turns on topic breadth rather than a single audience, because the festival spanned food, environmentalism, technology and health, so tastemakers from each vertical could carry it to followers a general event post would miss.

Oust built the push around preview days, inviting tastemakers to explore the space and meet the festival's vendors before the public dates, so their coverage ran ahead of the opening rather than after it.

Oust curated a team of influencers who captured their experiences at the festival during preview days, covering each vendor, testing the products on display and showing branded touchpoints from WSJ and partner brands in their content.

Oust reports that its creator partners' content garnered 60k views and 70k impressions during the preview days, and the agency links that content to conference admission selling out for the first time in the festival's run.

Strategy Breakdown

New Yorkers who could be interested in the festival's verticals, spanning food, environmentalism, technology and health.
WSJ acts as host of a multi-topic festival, so the creator content showed branded touchpoints from WSJ and partner brands side by side rather than the masthead alone.
The page places the creator visits in preview days ahead of the public dates, because early access gives tastemakers first-hand material while there is still admission left to sell.

Creative & Execution System

Partners

  • Oust

Results & Evidence

MetricValue
Views60K views
Impressions70K impressions
Additional Social Users1M social users

Why Oust's strategy worked

  1. 1

    Preview access gives creators something to report before the public can attend, so their coverage builds demand ahead of opening rather than recapping an event whose admission has already been sold.

  2. 2

    A festival spanning several verticals can be cast by creator specialism, so each tastemaker speaks to an interest group the programme already serves rather than to one generic event audience.

  3. 3

    Putting vendor products into creators' hands turns partner brands into content, which gives sponsors presence inside the host's coverage while the host's own touchpoints stay in the same frame.

Related Case studies