Sarasota Film Festival grabs tickets to digital stardom
Sarasota Film Festival
Accolades
Recognized as an up-and-comer on the Festival circuit, the Sarasota Film Festival came to us in the summer of 2005 to make their online presence a feature presentation. The non-profit arts organization had big plans for the future of not only their 10-day Festival, but for their year-round events – and their current website wasn’t going to support them.
Challenge
The Sarasota Film Festival had established itself as popular festival on the national circuit, but it was only skimming the surface of its potential. With its strong leadership, the festival had all the makings of a Sundance or Cannes. But it needed to create a relationship with its patrons and, at the same time, become more accessible to industry insiders. Ticket sales were haphazard. Demographics were untracked from year to year. Its sluggish web presence was keeping it from becoming elite. As more people were turning to the Web to find information about this budding festival, they were finding that the site was anything but impressive - not the first impression you want to make in the image-is-everything film community.
Solution
We worked closely with the festival's leadership and patrons to get an idea of what was needed to make a truly great film festival website. We found that each patron had different expectations and reasons for attending the festival - some loved the movies, some were more interested in the events surrounding the festival, others wanted to know how and when they could volunteer. We developed a revolutionary concept for a user-customized portal that would allow patrons to coordinate the movies they wanted to see. In-depth information about every aspect of the festival was just a click away. The result was My/SFF: My Festival. My Way. Patrons could log on the website to create their personalized festival experience. The festival website was the single resource for patrons, staff and film industry insiders.
Result
The development of this new site exponentially increased the Sarasota Film Festival's revenue and industry clout. Initial ticket sales surpassed that of any previous years' total ticket sales in a matter of days. Online revenues increased by over 250 percent from the previous year. More than 5,000 visitors created My/SFF accounts so they could receive e-blasts about the latest festival news, customize their festival schedule and purchase tickets for events and films. The Festival now has a fully manageable, evolving website, launching them to elite status on the film festival circuit. Every aspect of the festival was enhanced: patron experience and ticket sales, volunteer registrations and demographic tracking. The Sarasota Film Festival now uses the site to boost relationships with sponsors while attracting some of the best filmmakers, producers, screenwriters, actors and actresses in the film industry.
