PAX Aus Case Study
Introduction
RC has worked with PAX Aus, the Southern Hemisphere’s largest gaming convention, since 2018, handling all media and influencer work for the event. Recently RC has also been involved in helping with supporting the PAX Aus team with content and logistics.
The PAX Aus team describe Rocket as ‘an extension of their own team’ and RC gets involved in a wide variety of aspects of the event, including those outside of the traditional comms sphere.
Objectives
The RC objectives align with the overall marketing and event objectives, which are:
To increase attendance numbers and also revenue;
To attract new attendees to PAX - more women, first timers etc.
And increase retention, encouraging more return attendees.
From a media and influencer perspective, RC always aims to beat our reach and advertising equivalents year on year, growing the visibility of PAX through a variety of media and influencer networks.
RC is also responsible for managing the media accreditation process. PAX Aus sees nearly a thousand media and content creators through the doors over the weekend and RC manages this whole process.
Strategies
Schedule of consistent content beats from tickets on sale, one week to go to weekend wrap releases ensures that PAX Aus is always sharing compelling information with the media and influencers;
Working with loyal media and influencer partners to drive messaging from the beginning of the PAX Aus campaign;
Working with exhibitors and presenters, segmenting content pillars and relevant schedule panels/showcases/entertainment and communicating relevant content to different media targets and communicating ‘what PAX is?’ to new audiences.
Activities
From March when RC develops and pitches the ‘tickets on sale’ release, we create and distribute eight or more media announcements, including the Cosplay Championships announcement, Keynote speaker announcement, content releases, Indie Showcase announcement etc.
For most of these media announcements, RC will also conduct an influencer outreach sharing assets that the influencer could easily share if they don’t have the capacity to be able to create their own content. RC has formed a loyal influencer network with whom we work closely to ensure that they receive timely information and announcements about PAX to share with their networks.
RC liaises with exhibitors and presenters to glean any interesting information, new product launches, interesting ‘on floor’ activations etc. that can be used to create interesting media beats or news hooks for TV news desks.
RC is always happy to support our clients with anything they need, so, in 2023, RC picked up some of the logistics support for the PAX team, liaising with the Indie Showcase winners, organising the Cosplay Championships, communicating with the Collaboratory winners and organising the Community Meet-Ups. We’re happy to do what needs to be done to make things happen.
On site, RC manages the media desk, accreditation process, media room and handles any media requests, TV crews on the showfloor, as well as collecting content from around the show that is then turned into daily wrap releases to distribute to media.
Results
PAX Aus is often No. 1 on Twitter through the weekend of the event and is the third most tweeted about event after the Melbourne Cup and AFL Grand Final.
In 2023, the media and social results were as follows:
2023 Online & Print Media:
381 Pieces
Reach of 162,265,994
AVE of $2,919,441.49
2023 Broadcast Media:
20 Pieces
Reach of 7,810,000
AVE of $140,580.00
2023 Socials
443 Pieces
Reach of 12,637,471
AVE of $126,347.71
And we look forward to beating these numbers in 2024!