Built to Rock: Record-Breaking Festival Launch

Built to Rock: Turning a Tight Timeline into a Record-Breaking Festival Launch



Opening-day ticket sales surpassed total sales from the entire previous year. VIP tickets sold out within days, the first sellout in festival history. Camping capacity had to be expanded mid-campaign to meet demand. Every channel, digital, social, email, and earned media, outperformed every prior benchmark.



Rock the Locks already had the ingredients. Nationally recognized artists, a one-of-a-kind venue at Big River Golf Course in Umatilla, and a genuine vision for becoming the Pacific Northwest's premier rock festival. The festival needed a marketing engine powerful enough to match that ambition, and a partner who could build one fast.



City leadership had communicated that the festival needed to hit a specific ticket sales threshold to continue in future years. The pressure was real, and the margin for error was thin. Results would determine the future of the event.



zö agency was brought in late in the season and moved within 48 to 72 hours. We rebuilt the festival website from the ground up, then launched a fully integrated campaign across Meta, geofencing, streaming TV, programmatic display, radio, print, email, and PR, all anchored to one consistent message reaching music fans across the Tri-Cities, Hermiston, Pendleton, Eastern & Central Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and beyond.



Every channel had a job. None worked in isolation. Audiences encountered Rock the Locks everywhere they spent time, online and off, repeatedly, across platforms and mediums, until awareness became intent and intent became action.



The campaign cleared the threshold and kept going. The Rock the Locks team went from asking whether the festival could sustain itself to planning its future as a regional destination. A partner who moves fast, builds clean systems, and delivers measurable growth is what zö agency exists to be.