What you need to know:

• Frances Jewell became the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW’s head of marketing in late 2021, and began the process of creating a unified marketing team from the ashes of a formerly disconnected marketing, communications and PR mix.
• Knowing digital was a particular gap in capability, she put initial focus on improving digital infrastructure plus skills and has overhauled the NFP’s four websites as well as elevating digital in her function
• In the leadup to 2023, Jewell then conducted a creative agency review, choosing Connecting Plots off the back of a creative research program and plans to rejuvenate rather than revolutionise the Royal Easter Show’s branding and iconic ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ mnemonic.
• With an emphasis on securing pre-sales, in 2023 the Royal Easter Show smashed its annual revenue targets by 35 per cent, ticket sales targets by 10 per cent, and pre-sold 58 per cent of all tickets before the doors opened.
• Armed with the new creative, additional for-purpose messaging, some smart digital targeting across channels and a more unified culture, this year’s Easter Show managed to deliver solid results including a surprising increase in group/family expenditure even in a non-school holiday year and economic crisis.

2024 represented the third annual Easter Show for marketing chief at Royal Agricultural Society (RAS) of NSW, Frances Jewell. Talk about a baptism by fire.

Having taken the newly created group marketing role in November 2021, Jewell had just four months before the 2022 show, which coincided with the bicentenary of the RAS. It was a significant edition, attended by Princess Anne as the new patron of the society following the death of Prince Phillip in late 2021. There was still the Covid hangover. It was also a gut-wrenching but well-thought through exercise in crisis management after three teenagers fatally stabbed another teen during the event.

With Jewell’s second show, in 2023, she was confronted with two hefty challenges: The lowest attendance intent in a decade; and growing cost-of-living pressures Australians post-pandemic. Off the back of concerted efforts to boost pre-show ticket sales, a new creative agency partnership with Connecting Plots, and website infrastructure overhaul, the team sold a record 58 per cent of all tickets prior to day one, exceeding revenue targets by 35 per cent, with a revamped brand message that exceeded targets by 10 per cent.

Then came 2024 and an Easter a month earlier than people usually expect; plus the first non-school holiday show period since 2018 – something that can knock up to 20 per cent off total visitation numbers. Not to mention amped up anxiety and a slashing of discretionary spend thanks to inflationary pressures on the economy and record-breaking interest rate rises.

The show’s 2024 per-capita expenditure surprisingly hit $165, nearly flat year-on-year, but average spend per group/family lifted 8 per cent on last year to $461. And total visitation was just shy of 800,000 – a solid result given the timing.

Judging from Jewell’s efforts to date, it’s a result that doesn’t come from one standout feature of a marketing plan. Instead, there’s been a steady slog and growing maturity around an integrated, omnichannel marketing plan, building a united team, smarter media and tactical executions, improved digital capabilities, stronger creative agency partnership, more compelling messaging and brand assets – and a nostalgic consumer still finding dollars to engage in an event experience even in this tough economic climate.

Kickstarting a transformation

So where did it begin? The first thing was creating a centralised strategic marketing function.

Prior to Jewell’s appointment, RAS had kept marketing – which was reporting into commercial and primarily concentrated on sponsorships – separate to communications and PR, which were reporting to the GM. Under Jewell’s stewardship, there’s been a re-establishment of a centralised strategic marketing function, something she admits was a big job given the bench strength she inherited was “relatively lightweight”.

Her early emphasis was on digital skills and capabilities. The not-for-profit’s websites were running off a seven-year-old digital experience platform, there was no CRM in place, the 500,000-strong list of records of public show-goers wasn’t being managed particularly strategically, and communication wasn’t overly sophisticated. So Jewell uplifted a junior role to digital marketing manager and got busy selling the digital investment internally.

Over the last two years RAS NSW has rebuilt its four websites on Optimizely’s Episerver CMS – the NFP’s home site, Sydney Royal Easter Show site, its Australasian animal registry site for pet microchip registrations, and its Sydney Showground event hosting site. It’s also brought in HubSpot as its CRM and marketing automation platform, shifting away from an older ExactTarget (now part of Salesforce) email marketing module. By no means is it job done, but it helped generate record pre-sales last year.

Revisiting the creative

Then there was the agency mix. For 2022, Jewell stuck with it, doing a basic refresh of the campaign materials because she recognised things were “looking a little tired”. But in preparing for her second edition in 2023, Jewell kicked off a creative refresh. After a competitive pitch featuring three agencies, Connecting Plots was chosen, ousting Banjo Bastion 30 (Banjo was acquired by Bastion in 2018).

“I’d been able to take more of a breath, assess our creative agency and said it’s time to move on. There was a lot of enthusiasm for a new campaign positioning,” Jewell tells Mi3. Up to that point, the show had used the iconic tune ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ for five years. A bespoke version with tweaked lyrics was adopted in 2022 to reflect more of an agricultural theme and did its part in getting 883,000 people through the gates that year.

“Having been in for less than one year, I was nervous about just saying ‘let’s go there’ and doing the classic marketing thing of changing the packaging and everything in a new job,” Jewell says. “So my brief to pitch was, provide us with evolution and a revolution – give us something that taps into the value of what we had in the campaign, or look at something completely different that reinvents it.”

Connecting Plots came back wanting to do research through Cubery, which has a substantial creative benchmarking database. “I’m a research junkie myself, so I agreed,” says Jewell.

“Research outcomes were surprising to all of us. They recommended against trying for a revolution, as there’s enough value in the ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ proposition. I was up for that. But a key finding was that while the campaign itself was memorable and well liked conceptually, its main deficit was it wasn’t compelling as a call to action to buy tickets. It did a great job of reminding people the show is coming up or is on, but the CTA didn’t compel people to go straight away to the website, buy tickets and get conversion happening at an early rate.”

The ‘Happy as you know it’ mnemonic showed up as strong, powerful and well-liked tune, but again, people didn’t like RAS changing the words – “it was a polarising thing for many”, continues Jewell.

Connecting Plots removed the adopted lyrics. To tackle the call-to-action component, it then came up with the ‘Find your Happy Place’ moniker.

“That tapped into the nostalgia of memorable moments of the show – nostalgia is a very big part of the equity of what the Easter Show is, but equally in how we communicate it,” Jewell says. “Our visual footage of experiences, for example, will not only be of a ride, but of the animal nursery, horse jumping, show food and bags. All the pillars quintessentially reflecting the Sydney Easter Show. People always have a memory that makes them smile, and so much is anchored in childhood wonder and joy. So much of what we use visually is just that – the amazing expression on kid’s faces when seeing a baby pig, sheep or goat.”

The agency also created a visual device of swinging curtains in the button logo, the first framing device beside the logo RAS has had.  

The new creative debuted for the 2023 show. Alongside Connecting Plots, RAS has retained indpendent media agency, Pearman Media, plus Dentsu Creative, which it’s been working with for 26 years (since it was Cox Inall).  

“It’s a momentous event happening at one time of the year, so our campaign is very truncated into about six weeks. As soon as Australia Day is done and dusted and school is back, that’s when a campaign and ticket sales start,” Jewell comments. “It’s a concentrated period, and we also have to do a lot of work to boost recall and memory of the show plus also convert them to ticket sales. We’re always happy when supermarkets throw hot cross buns into the stores just after new year, as it starts to build that Easter is coming sentiment.”

A number of campaign derivates were created, including a 30-second TV spot targeting all sorts of demos.

“It’s very difficult to market to absolutely everyone, so we focus on families with children, but you can stretch that to grandparents with children and down to young kids and that first childhood moment of patting an animal in real life,” Jewell says. “That’s where digital comes into play. We can target different segments with derivates of the execution.”

Additional spots focused on animals, carnival, showbags and food. With the latter, Jewell notes there’s been an extension out from classic show food like Dagwood dogs or cheesecake on a stick to a more elevated food experience through Sydney Royal and the Sydney Royal Wine, Dairy, Beer & Cider, and Fine Food competitions.

“So we’re appealing to ‘sinks’ [single income no kids] and dinks [dual income, no kids]’ – as well as 32 or 72-year-olds who like fine wine and food,” Jewell says.

But RAS equally diversified away from traditional TV and radio heavy campaigning into other channels such as programmatic video, digital and social.

“Proportionately, digital would now outweigh TV,” says Jewell. “We also do out-of-home, which is all digital – we use shopping centre and retail to get grocery buyers as well as some of the large-sized digital placements on the M2 and M7 from Sydney.”

Off the back of these efforts, the Royal Easter Show smashed its 2023 revenue targets by 35 per cent, ticket sales targets by 10 per cent, and pre-sold 58 per cent before the doors opened. More than 90 per cent awareness in NSW of campaign messaging also adds to the results tally.

2024: Tackling strapped consumers and a non-school holiday year

Coming into 2024, a couple of dimensions were critical to planning and delivery. The first was the fact Easter was almost a month earlier than the previous year. The second was the Royal Easter was running outside of NSW School Holidays – something it last did in 2018. This can mean a dip in foot traffic of 15 to 20 per cent based on historical data.

Then there’s that hip pocket trouble many are experiencing. “We do know broadly is level of spending has dropped dramatically; discretionary spend particularly,” Jewell says.

“The Sydney Easter Show and Melbourne Royal Show showed us people will still buy tickets, but once you’re in the gate, there are so many things you can do, you don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money to keep yourself entertained from 9am to 9pm. You could pack a sandwich and only modestly top up with a lemonade or ice cream. What we did know from a lot of events and talk was discretionary spend had dropped off.”

It’s a situation that’s slashed the cultural events calendar over the last 18 months with the cancellation of Splendour in the Grass, Falls Festival and Groovin the Moo among others. Much of this is attributed to poor early ticket sales.

“We also wanted to tighten the screws a bit further on pre-purchasing messaging and saving. We had a huge accomplishment by pre-selling 58 per cent of tickets before the show started, which was an unprecedented milestone for us,” Jewell says.

There was a definitely drop-off in pre-show purchasing this year, a disappointing result. Jewell’s hypothesis is people were caught unawares of the earlier Easter dates. Sydneysiders being particularly poor planners is another ongoing issue.  

“On a couple of days, we had early spikes in ticket purchasing – the first weekend was our fastest selling rate in the early weeks of the campaign,” she notes.

Yet even with these ominous signs, this year’s Easter Show saw a huge spike in foot traffic on Good Friday, outselling last year. Total ticket sales were 4 per cent above budget overall – albeit on more conservative forecasting. Total attendance reached just under 800,000.

Per capita expenditure in 2024 reached $165 down slightly from $167 last year, but bucking the predicted dip in discretionary spend, average spend per group/family was $461 compared to $425 in 2023, an 8 per cent lift. The mix of spend also shifted somewhat this year, with more money spent on food and beverages and commercial exhibitors.

“We were expecting to feel the pinch a bit more, although the F&B team had said the bars sold well and hit targets,” Jewell says.

From a channel and advertising perspective, new elements included bus sides, which RAS hadn’t done for a number of years and were designed to add another layer to spread across north, south and western Sydney.

More targeted, omnichannel digital activations including programmatic digital out-of-home, BVOD and display all proved to influence people the path to purchase, while geo-based targeting delivered a smarter way of reaching and engaging family demos.

Final advertising figures are still being calculated, but RAS reports its radio campaign was a strong performer, reaching 77 per cent of people aged 14+ in Sydney through commercial radio in 2024, with listeners hearing the creative an average of 7.7 times.

“Media were more engaged this year than I’ve seen in the three years I’ve been here… The vibe of everyone involved was really positive,” Jewell adds.

The authenticity play

An important new purpose layer in the messaging was connecting RAS and its not-for-profit work supporting the agriculture sector.

“As the organiser hosting the Easter Show, you spending money here actually helps supports the future of agriculture. For me, that was another means by which to encourage those sitting on the fence to spend discretionary money at the show,” Jewell says. “If they knew some of the investment was going to do some good, they might be inclined to spend more.

“Strategically, that’s been on my radar… we did this as a tactical layer within show communication this year. How successful and recognisable that will be we won’t know for a bit yet – hopefully we’ll get that through the tracking survey and recall measurements. But it was an untapped opportunity to persuade we haven’t leveraged before.”

Another priority is continuity of messaging in the off-show season “so we can dial up again and reinforce money is going to bigger and better things – it keeps farmers going,” she says.  

Now overseeing 10 staff, Jewell is equally proud of the way the team has come together to deliver.

“It was a very divided culture between marketing and PR/comms teams. It’s taken time to understand social media doesn’t operate in isolate to earned and paid media,” she says. “Being integrated has led to a fantastic culture and capability in the people here, and I felt so proud of how they were all operating as a team this year, along with managing stakeholders throughout, keeping brand messaging positive,” she says. “You always have a few management moments – nothing like the 2022 show I hope – but everything went beautifully.”