Touring to Park Metropolis for Sundance comes at a steep price to attendees. That situation, Benay stated, makes the in-person pageant inaccessible to most of its target market. The Institute’s mission is to search out, assist, nurture and supply a platform for underestimated artists hailing from numerous backgrounds.
“If we’re solely connecting [filmmakers] to at least one specific kind of viewers demographic, then we’re solely doing half our jobs,” Benay stated. “You possibly can inform individuals, ‘Hey, Sundance is for you. However when it prices hundreds of {dollars} to take part in any respect, then it’s actually disingenuous,” she added.
The pageant’s less expensive on-line screening possibility implies that Benay can actually inform audiences that Sundance is for them. She additionally considers the best way the Institute speaks to its audiences in its messaging and throughout social channels.
Why Sundance Institute reconstructed its advertising and marketing technique
Since she took on the position, Benay’s been constructing out a advertising and marketing technique. The advertising and marketing price range elevated after she joined. By then, the Institute determined to take a position extra critically in full-funnel promoting and viewers growth.
This 12 months, Benay deconstructed the pageant’s Day by day Recap manufacturing mannequin. Till 2024, the pageant aired the recap each day, in theaters. The longform information digest broadcast the earlier days’ occasions, and the theatrical format relied on a 24-hour manufacturing window, a number of crews stationed throughout the occasion and pictures in late-night submit manufacturing.
“Then, on the finish of that, the people who see it are largely the individuals already on the mountain. Then we might present clips, perhaps on social media and put it on YouTube … nevertheless it was actually serving an viewers that we already had,” she stated.
Engagement at this 12 months’s pageant additionally mattered to the pageant’s model companions, who profit from pageant site visitors in Park Metropolis and launch their very own activations amidst the occasion.
“Fundraising on the pageant not solely allows us to host the pageant yearly, but in addition is a essential piece of our price range for operating our year-round artists packages. We do our labs and plenty of the opposite work that ultimately even feeds into the pipeline of the pageant,” stated Mary Sadeghy, the Sundance Institute’s head of partnerships and co-director of development.
Most pageant sponsors have had a presence there for at the very least ten years. Sponsorship entails a donation to the Institute, and a separate price for its activation. Companions independently deal with logistics like securing area on Essential Avenue and planning their very own occasions schedule. Official companions embody different pageant nonprofits, like Girls in Movie, to co-host pageant occasions at no additional price.
