I normally start the day off by looking at my instagram feed, mostly for design inspiration but also to kick-off the day with a good meme-induced laugh. This morning I saw a sponsored post for a collaboration between Adobe Cloud and EDC (Electric Daisy Carnival). If you’re not familiar with EDC, it is the largest electronic dance music festival in North America. The annual flagship event was normally held in May (pushed to October due to Covid-19), at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. EDC is known for bringing in the top international djs, filled with jaw-dropping visuals and immersive experiences that bring in thousands of fans from all over the globe.
Adobe and EDC partnered up to create “Meet me at the rave-a-thon”, a design competition where they invite all designers to create a virtual flyer and share with their friends via social media to highlight their first free virtual concert taking place May15th- 17th. There’s been tons of entries that are keeping designers engaged but I’d say the smarter thing is that they are offering a free trial to download app so you can enter (and hopefully retain memberships after). What a great idea to convert a large audience who have perhaps wanted to experiment with design but maybe not have had the time or have not found a good enough reason for trying photoshop. They also made it easy and supplied downloadable fonts and image options to make sure all entries stay on brand.
Something even more enticing for this demographic is that they are awarding the top design VIP ticket to EDC’s future concert taking place in October, airfare and accommodation for winner and friends, a 12-month all inclusive Creative Cloud subscription and live recognition of the winning design via official EDC live stream. (Designer’s dream for likes and followers as well as a great hurrah after quarantining).
In my opinion, this is the best way to organically promote the “in real life” music festival taking place in October via instagram and twitter as well as a chance to engage and convert their demographic to download and try adobe photoshop. EDC has always strived to be a place where people can connect, on and off the dance floor, and now with Adobe, they have created a design space for people that deeply enjoy music and design while supporting the #stayhome cause by providing the first large-scale virtual rave promoted by it’s loyal audience.
In 2014, EDC was held at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on June 20–22, 2014. Insomniac Events announced that all 345,000 tickets to the three-day festival had been sold by June 18, 2014. At the conclusion of the 2014 event, the massive three-day festival drew in roughly 134,000 per day. More recently in 2019 they had 450,000 people attend, and up until today, EDC has made $2 Billion for the Las Vegas economy since 2011 with hotel room bookings, vendors and staffing just to name a few. If the quarantine is over by October, this would be a great come-back for Las Vegas which has been undoubtedly one of the cities that has been hit the hardest by Covid-19 due to their revenue primarily consisting of large events and people-filled indoor spaces.
Here’s to hoping this is all over by October so EDM and design lovers can unite in person, until then virtual concerts are not a bad option either!
https://creativitytour.adobe.com/challenges/ps-edc-ls/?sdid=599F8P92&mv=social&mv2=paidsoc
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