Overview

Jennifer, Creative Director of the annual Austin Food & Wine Festival, partnered with Level Nine Media to revitalize the festival’s brand and digital ecosystem. Tasked with conveying Austin’s vibrant culinary scene, our scope included a refreshed color palette, new logo, cohesive branding, a responsive SEO-optimized website, and a year-round marketing engine to drive ticket sales and sponsor engagement.

Objectives

• Brand Identity & Visual System: Develop a warm, appetizing palette and logo that reflect Austin’s food-centric culture.
• Website Design & SEO: Build a mobile-first website optimized for “Austin food festival” and “wine tasting Austin” search terms.
• Integrated Marketing: Execute digital campaigns—email, social, paid ads—and on-site materials to boost awareness and attendance.

Solution & Implementation

1. Colors & Logo
   • Crafted a dynamic logo combining a stylized wine glass with the outline of Texas, paired with a palette of burnt orange, vineyard purple, and lime green.
   • Delivered a comprehensive style guide covering typography, iconography, and application rules for print and digital assets.
2. Branding & Collateral
   • Designed ticket templates, event signage, sponsor decks, and program guides—ensuring visual consistency across all touchpoints.
   • Produced social-media templates and email headers aligned with the festival’s seasonal themes.
3. Website Design & SEO
   • Built a fully responsive site with interactive schedules, chef spotlights, and ticket-ordering integration.
   • Implemented on-page SEO: keyword-rich copy for pages like “Austin Food & Wine Festival 2025,” optimized meta tags, and local schema markup to capture “food festival near me” and “Austin wine event” queries.
   • Integrated a blog for event previews—featuring spotlight posts on participating chefs, wineries, and food trucks—to drive long-tail traffic and subscriber growth.
4. Marketing & Promotion
   • Launched a multi-channel paid campaign (Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads) segmented by interest (“wine tasting,” “food trucks,” “live music”) and geolocation (Austin, Round Rock, San Marcos).
   • Established a monthly newsletter with early-bird announcements, sponsor features, and exclusive tasting guides—growing Jennifer’s subscriber list by 3,500+ in six months.
   • Coordinated influencer partnerships with local food bloggers and gastro-photographers, amplifying reach with event-day Instagram takeovers and live Reels.

Results

• Website Traffic: 65% year-over-year increase in unique visitors.
• Ticket Sales: Early-bird registrations sold out two weeks faster than the previous year.
• SEO Performance: “Austin food festival” page ranked in the Top 3 and “wine tasting Austin” page in the Local 3-Pack.
• Newsletter Growth: 3,500+ new subscribers at a 42% average open rate.
• Social Engagement: Paid social ads achieved a 4.8× return on ad spend, and organic posts saw a 28% lift in engagement.

Conclusion
By uniting refreshed branding, a performance-driven website, rigorous SEO, and targeted marketing campaigns, Level Nine Media empowered Jennifer and the Austin Food & Wine Festival to deepen audience engagement, accelerate ticket sales, and cement the event as a must-attend highlight on Central Texas’s culinary calendar.

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