We had $675,000 to unite all 11 festivals under 1 identity and launch it at the international level, without any media buy, except for a minimal investment of $15,000 in SEO.

a) Over 14,000,000 impressions in all types of media (La Presse, The Telegraph from London, Radio Canada live newscast on launch night, cultural blogs, etc.) b) 700,000 views of all the videos produced; more than 500,000 for Merton; 100,000 of which happened in the first 48 hoursc) 36 blog posts and 27 videos producedd) Over 9,700,000 potential impressions on Twittere) Over 250,000 Facebook pageviews

To kick start this campaign, we used a YouTube star, Merton, who became popular with his musical improvisations on Chatroulette, an ideal choice to ensure the viral effect we needed. Merton is a young pianist-improviser who really committed himself to the strategy, the target and the image of the new brand. He was credible with young, connected people and his first YouTube video was seen over 8m times!Communicating live with London, Paris, New York and Toronto, Merton recruited festivalgoers and gave away 'golden lanyards' — a trip to Montreal and unlimited festival passes. A Facebook contest was added to win an additional trip. Twitter, Foursquare and Flickr were used to generate more buzz. Other bloggers were invited to create content; therefore, at virtually no cost, Festimania used social media to reach hundreds of thousands people around the world.

Montreal Festimania was created in 2010, bringing together 11 festivals held in Montreal. The objective was to increase awareness about Montreal as a festival city in key tourist markets.The target audience was young, connected people. They are producers of digital content, but not generally receptive to traditional tourist messages, but Montreal Festimania could appeal to them if conveyed in original, engaging manner.Compared to Paris or New York, Montreal is not the first tourist destination that comes to mind. This could be considered a weak point at first, but a strength for our trendy target market. Although Montreal might be the underdog, Festimania has everything it takes to resonate with a young, hip demographic.Buzz for Festimania was created using word-of-mouth and free platforms integrated into our digital properties, fed by user-generated content.