What Red Bull does in the world of music is extraordinary. Our unique approach, focusing on niche, forward-thinking musicians and music scenes, gives us a unique opportunity to engage brand-skeptical audiences in a variety of creative spaces through Red Bull Music Festival New York and beyond. However, in spite of the Festival’s annual recurrence in NY for over a half decade, awareness of it from a collegiate audience has historically been low.

To solve this problem, I launched a robust collegiate marketing strategy for the festival, leveraging our 35+ Student Ambassador network. Since acts at the festival, such as Fever Ray, Oneohtrix Point Never, Show Me The Body, and John Maus, don’t appeal to a general music consumer in the same way that a traditional festival like Governor’s Ball or Coachella would, I taught the ambassadors how to identify the right, culture-savvy students on their campuses to promote the program, offer experiences to, and build sustainable relationships in the arts with.

The strategy consisted of a collegiate promoter program, a collegiate apprenticeship program, a user-generated content activation, and an array of marketing tools for the Student Ambassador network to deploy.

The program resulted in quadrupled collegiate attendance from YP.