Social Impact Partnership
Social Impact
We install social impact, cause marketing, and CSR solutions into our festival development and experiential marketing services. When brands, festivals, and community partners align around purpose, everyone wins - and the work becomes something worth talking about.
Bourbon Cares
A flagship social impact program born inside the Forecastle Festival, Bourbon Cares brought Kentucky Bourbon Trail brands, touring bands, and the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust together around a shared purpose.
Mission
Introduce 30,000 new consumers to Kentucky Bourbon Trail brands, while providing a new revenue vertical for the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust to protect critical Kentucky wildlands.
Strategy
Design an engaging experiential marketing activation that partners bourbon brands with touring bands inside the Forecastle Festival. Design a "turn-of-the-century rickhouse meets prohibition-era speakeasy" and invite bands to sample single-barrel selections from their favorite brands. Pair Woodford Reserve, Four Roses, Old Forester, Heaven Hill, and Wild Turkey with artists like Alabama Shakes, My Morning Jacket, Band of Horses, Spoon, and more. Invite artists to serve drinks to their biggest fans, with community investment proceeds going to protect critical watersheds and old-growth forests.
Results
The participating brands received a powerful PR, corporate social responsibility, and social impact marketing partnership that yielded new consumers and strong retail sales at no cost, other than allocating a single-barrel to the program (which was paid for by the concessionaire). Kentucky Natural Lands Trust raised thousands to protect critical watersheds and wildlands corridors. For the festival, an impactful experiential marketing activation and community giveback was born, which grew from 900 to 15,000 square feet. The sheer volume of new consumers it attracted led Forecastle to be recognized as "Bourbon's Most Important Festival" by Wall Street Journal best-selling author Fred Minnick.
