Performance Category: Events

Once Upon India (OUI) – Bhaitaks

A Meaningful Connection Is Made

When the opportunity to collaborate with Once Upon India was presented, it was a welcome reminder of our early days as a performance marketing agency when marketing for events was our mainstay. While we were first onboarded as consultants, by our third consultation call, the Once Upon India team asked us to take over their performance marketing, and that's where things got fun!

What excited us about this brand was their niche content and audience – home baithaks that celebrate Indian artists and regional music, packaged for an older, elite crowd that is seeking meaningful connection and community.

 

 

Once Upon India’s events have spanned everything from Punjabi, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Pahadi and Bengali folk to Sufi, Qawwali and Kathak. And with us, they have grown from intimate gatherings, baithaks of 70 to 80 people, to flirting with larger events of up to 400 attendees.

The Challenge Was to Speak to the Right Audience

 

We knew right away that there would be several challenges, which we were ready to tackle head on. 

  • These were not events that would appeal to a mass audience. They’re intentionally curated to attract a discerning audience that is looking for exclusivity. From the brand’s perspective, they too wanted an engaged audience, which would then become volunteers / advocates for the brand.
  • Given the audience, the events were priced far higher than average compared to events with a similar artist profile. It then fell on us to target the right audience and differentiate the events by communicating them as curated experiences.  

How We Scaled the Brand from Baithaks to Mehfils

Between September 2024 and February 2025, our aim was to help the brand identify what messaging worked and hone in on the right targeting to help them expand from baithaks to larger mehfils. And we succeeded in increasing ticket sales even as the ticket prices went up 4X.

The only ads the brand had ever run were traffic campaigns, and though they had a decent Outbound Click-through rates (CTRs)  of over 3.14%, they only received 1 purchase, with the rest coming from organic channels. We wanted to run Purchase Conversion ads for improved lead quality, which also meant we would be starting at a much lower Outbound CTR.

We were able to increase their ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) from 3.54 in September 2024 to 30.09 in January 2025 and their Outbound Click-through rates (CTRs) from averages like 1.61% in October 2024 to 2.67% in January 2025.

 

Balancing Creative Diversity With Focused Targeting 

We made the most of the invaluable insights we received from the Once Upon India team to hone in on the winning messaging and targeting.  Experimenting with a combination of open targeting and custom audience ad sets helped us sell out two shows on the same weekend each seating 300 people with ticket prices ranging from ₹2,500 to ₹12,000.

 

 

We went both wide and deep in our creative testing, and tested various messaging whether focusing on the theme of the event, spotlighting the artists, or USPs of the location. 

Testing formats showed us video carousels gave results in the remarketing funnel, while even simple static creatives led to purchases in the top of the funnel. In our video assets, we found layering music from live performances, with voiceovers that built a mood and a narrative, resonated with our audience. Our best-performing video ads pulled hook rates and hold rates well above 30%. 

Reflecting on Our Journey and Future Collaborations

With our efforts we have been able to show the brand the various possibilities they can pursue to scale their unique concept. As they assess their way forward, we look to aiding them – whether to build their in-house capabilities or directly collaborate on more campaigns in the future.

 

 

 

Spoken Fest

In 2019 and 2020, The Small Business Project promoted three editions of Kommune’s Spoken Fest – Asia's Largest Spoken Word Festival – achieving an attendance of more than 10,000 at each event.

 

The Small Business Project was associated with Kommune – an organisation that showcases the best of performing arts through poets, storytellers, and musicians – long before we actually worked on its flagship event Spoken Fest – Asia's Largest Spoken Word Festival.

 

Setting the stage

Our first association with Kommune was through Beatmap, promoting their curated house party experiences across Indian cities – starting in December 2017. Because of our success with Beatmap, the Kommune team entrusted us with online marketing for Mehfil, a three-hour long event in celebration of Hindustani and Urdu poetry, music, and storytelling in April 2018. 

Following the success of Mehfil, Kommune founder Roshan Abbas tasked us with achieving Amazon bestseller status for his book Speechless, which we went on to bag across several relevant Amazon book categories. We continued to associate with Kommune in various capacities, including marketing several of their smaller events and workshops. 

 

A successful debut

It was later in 2018 that Amishi Patel, who was festival coordinator for Spoken Fest at that time, got in touch with us for the promotion of Spoken 2019, to be held in January 2020 in Mumbai. Amishi felt that we’d be a good fit for the job given our familiarity and experience with Kommune’s audience and past event data. 

We worked closely with the Kommune team, running paid campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Google. This included managing some 50 paid ad collaborations with various artists across platforms. Together we achieved a footfall of 10,000 at the event. 

It had been an exciting journey, and we were delighted to be asked to work on online promotions for the next two editions of Spoken Fest, to be held in Delhi and Mumbai. 

 

Showtime!

First up was the Delhi edition in December 2019. Phase one of our ad strategy involved introducing the festival to different audiences, while also testing different creatives and messaging routes. Phase two was conversion-focused, with an artist-first approach. Spoken Delhi also featured multiple workshops, such as Ankur Tewari’s songwriting. We marketed and targeted for each workshop individually to gain traction. The event was a roaring success, seeing attendance of some 15,000 people.

The Mumbai 2020 edition was scheduled for January 2020, about a month later. December can be a challenging month for digital campaigns, with increased digital costs and changing user behavior. However, with our diligent ad monitoring, we were able to optimise the budget for maximum impact. We made the most of our experience with existing audiences, sentiment analysis, and creative messaging to maximise our outreach and conversion for the Mumbai edition. Our hard work paid off when over 15,000 people attended Spoken Fest 2020 in Mumbai. 

POD’ium

A Little Info

POD’ium was launched in 2020, in collaboration with Spotify, Anchor, and Kommune to grow the podcast culture in India. Led by the country’s best podcasters, it virtually organised educational workshops to empower promising podcast creators and bootcamp workshops on how to create and distribute podcasts via the Spotify-owned Anchor app

Point of Contact

At the time, we were working with Kommune, a pan-India creator collective. When the POD’ium collaboration was finalised, the project head of Spotify connected with us to promote it. Through the collaboration’s pilot edition of Pitchfest, wherein a budding creator can pitch his/her podcast idea, the organisers wanted to create 200 new podcasts.

To achieve this, they wanted our help in reaching 8 million promising creators, who would be interested in attending podcast workshops, across India.

Strategy & Process

To grow the number of participants in the workshops, we planned to run cross-platform ads on Facebook/Instagram, YouTube, and Google Display Network for a period of 30 days. The ads would urge recipients to register for Pitchfest.

Understanding the requirements from the POD’ium team, we set up brand awareness and traffic campaigns targeting all regions in India. Campaigns – featuring Kenny Sebastian, Pooja Dhingra, Kalki Koechlin, and Ranveer Allahbadia – were run to generate workshop registrations for audiences interested in comedy, food, storytelling, and self-improvement respectively.   

 

To track visits directed from the ads, a dedicated landing page was created, where visitors could register via a form. The ads were constantly optimised to maximise reach and page visits. 

Results

We were able to reach 80% of our target audience while conserving 40% of the ad budget. A reach of 14 million users was achieved on all digital properties. More than 1.8 lakh people visited the website during the campaign period, with YouTube contributing to 44.3% of the traffic, followed by Facebook/Instagram (38.9%), Google Display Network (16.4%), and Google Search (0.4%).

Vir Das

''I have been raving about you and Harshith to Rosh(an) and Rohit. Would rehire in a heartbeat, and will definitely be recommending you to others. You guys have been absolute professionals. You should be really proud of the heart you bring and what you’ve built.''

RAKSHITACOO, Weirdass Comedy Requirements

About the client

Emmy-nominated actor and comedian Vir Das doesn’t need a long introduction, so we will keep it short! As an actor he’s known for movies like Delhi Belly (2011), Go Goa Gone (2013), and set to star in a Judd Apatow film next. As a comedian, he’s performed at over 100 stand-up comedy shows, eight TV shows and six comedy specials (One of which we were involved with in a not-insignificant way!). He’s supported by his team at Weirdass Comedy, who we collaborated with closely on our project.

First contact

In July 2020, his team at Weirdass Comedy reached out for help with marketing his comedy special ‘Inside Out’. A novelty concept borne out of the lockdown, it consisted of close to 30 paid online shows wherein he would interact directly with the audience. All proceeds from the series of shows were to be donated towards Covid-relief work.

At the time we were approached, the show was only going to be live for 10 days. And the Netflix special it is now known as was not in the offing.

Target for the campaign 

15,000 purchases at ₹30 each within a ₹3 Lakh budget

 

Timeline 

Pre-Launch: 15 days 

Post-Launch (during which the campaign was live): 10 days

Extended Campaign: 6 days

 

Results

Total number of ticket sales: 11,281

Total amount raised: INR 35 Lakhs of which 60% was through our paid marketing campaigns

The success of the campaign and the show itself helped it get picked up by Netflix and released as a Netflix film Vir Das: Outside In the same year in December.

Approach

We worked closely with the team at Weirdass Company, consulting them on the infrastructure that they were going to build. 

  • Originally, they planned to tie up with a ticketing partner but we advised against it as relying on our own infrastructure would grant us more flexibility with targeting and data analytics, and hence, bring us far better results. 
  • We helped the team construct a landing page to direct traffic from the ads we would be running. 
  • We planned to run ads on these platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Google and Reddit. 
  • We guided the Weirdass team on the various ad messaging routes based on the types of audiences that we planned to target. As part of the campaign, we created an Instagram filter that had Vir asking people what they were looking forward to doing after the lockdown.  
  • Over the course of the campaign, we constantly monitored the ads with lots of audience listening to tweak and optimise them for maximum results. 
  • Our target age group in terms of users and sales were between 18 and 34. This age group comprised over 70% of website visitors and led to around 80% of the total sales.
  • Around 21% of the total visitors returned to the website to make the final purchase, which accounted for around 78% of the total sales.

Show Score

About the client

Part of the TodayTix Group, Show-Score is a New York City theatre review aggregator, community review site, and ticket finder. It has been likened to "the Rotten Tomatoes for theatre" and also to TripAdvisor, and provides a 'leaderboard' of most-active reviewers and most-liked shows.

 

A “Wonderful” Wicked Giveaway

Show-Score was running a giveaway around the popular musical Wicked from November 18 to December 20, 2021. Prizes included a night out at the theatre with five friends, dinner/drinks before the show, and an exclusive virtual meet with the cast. To win, participants needed to accumulate points by reviewing shows on the platform, sharing the giveaway on social media and inviting friends to create accounts on the platform.

Our approach

Show-Score’s General Manager Deeksha Gaur got in touch with us for a strategy to maximise user acquisition during the giveaway. We suggested a focus on Facebook and Instagram ads, and started by putting together a media plan and studying and segmenting Show-Score’s databases and audiences. We also worked closely with the Show-Score team to develop crisp, straightforward messaging for ad campaigns.

The results

Over a 30-day period leading up to Christmas, we set up various campaigns and experimented with different audiences. We kept a very close eye on the campaigns and met bi-weekly with the Show-Score team to evaluate ad, audience, and creative performance as well as website drop-offs. We constantly optimised campaigns with a view to gain maximum users at minimum cost. As a result, we achieved close to 1,000 reviews via paid media and contributed to 40% of the traffic generated by reaching close to 135,000 users in the US.

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