Outside Festival Launches First-of-Its-Kind Festival Celebrating the Outdoors
According to Colorado's Office of Outdoor Recreation, outdoor recreation is a lifeblood industry in Colorado, generating $62 billion in economic activity every year and supporting more than a half-million jobs across the state. With behemoth outdoor industry events, like Outdoor Retailer, retiring (and some say “dying”) in Colorado, there was a big hole in the outdoors-loving state. That’s where Outside Inc. stepped in.
Drawing inspiration from events like South by Southwest (SXSW), a conglomeration of art, culture, music, and education; TED, champion of thought leadership; and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the global stage for innovation, the Outside Festival made an intention to fill the void for the outdoor industry by partnering with The State of Colorado’s Outdoor Recreation Industry Office and Visit Denver.
Even with industry-leading event producers and festival agencies like Groundswell Experiential and Superfly on board, first-time events can be intimidating. What if no one shows up? What if no one likes it? What if all our talent cancels? Those fears couldn’t have been further off for the Outside Festival, which was a dashing success in its inaugural year throughout downtown venues in the Mile High City, including Civic Center Park, Lincoln Memorial Park, and the Denver Art Museum.
Backbone was tasked with generating publicity, building buzz, and ultimately driving ticket sales for the first-ever Outside Festival, and over the six months leading up to the event, we created media moments that produced a steady drumbeat of coverage and built hype:
- Deployed five press releases to coincide with major announcements (e.g., tickets-on-sale, music line-up release, etc.)
- Participated in and invited media to regular monthly mixers with festival organizers and partners.
- Hosted a press conference from an Adaptive Adventures climbing wall with Colorado Governor Jared Polis, director and storyteller Malik Martin, and Outside Festival spokespersons.
- Coordinated 30+ on-the-ground interviews during the festival weekend
- Hosted and managed interview requests for more than 100 media at the Outside Festival and The Summit, an exclusive industry gathering the day before the festival
- Ensured the Outside Festival hit every event calendar in the front range and beyond
Earned media goals were achieved (and then some!):
- 1.7+ billion earned media impressions
- 300+ placements
Snapshot of online/print earned media coverage:
Snapshot of broadcast earned media coverage:
Other event highlights include:
- An estimated 18,000 attendees over three days – 20% of whom traveled from out of state to the festival and 31% identified as non-white.
- 100+ sponsors, partners, and non-profit organizations activating and curating programming on-site
- ZERO single-use plastics available on-site (with additional programming and goals developed by Green Disco and Outside's internal sustainability team)
- 18+ hours of music featuring five global music acts (Thundercat, Fleet Foxes, Lettuce, etc.) and five local acts
- 55+ panels, talks, book signings & talent experiences & 20 film screenings featuring the likes of Shaun White, Jeremy Jones, Quannah Chasinghorse, and Diana Nyad to packed rooms at the Denver Arts Museum.
What about the festival’s economic impact on Colorado’s vital outdoor industry? While it’s still too early to say definitively, early projections done in 2023 by the Colorado Economic Development Commission estimated that 10,000 attendees would generate an economic impact of about $4.7 million.
What’s next? To quote Outside's CEO Robin Thurston, who took the stage on Sunday night during the festival to address the crowd, “See you next year, same time, same place.”
