Case Study
City of Sydney Lunar New Year: The Year of the Dog
Campaign objectives
Dual language festival guide
Custom publish a printed guidebook to Chinese New Year, in English and Simplified Chinese.
Achieve genuine engagement
Time Out wanted to add a touch of lifestyle element into the guide hence five lead feature articles were added to engage readers.
Promote and distribute
Promote Sydney Chinese New Year events across Time Out platforms, as well as facilitate distribution of the physical guide through our network.
The idea
City of Sydney approached Time Out to design, revamp, edit and manage the production of the 2018 guidebook. We advised that the book should be designed more with readers in mind than previous editions.
Previous guidebooks divided the events into too many categories and sub-categories. This year we made things as simple as we were allowed, with 11 event categories instead of 19, and 15 sections for readers to navigate instead of 28.
We wanted to engage readers in Chinese New Year, so we commissioned articles on good luck tips, famous dogs of Sydney, the inception and shooting of Danling Xiao’s creative campaign, and a celebrity’s Lunar New Year family routine.
Campaign execution
We created a dual-language, 88-page guide to the City’s Chinese New Year celebrations. You can read the full guidebook (and marvel at all of those cute doggos) here, or scroll through a few highlights, below.
On-platform promotion
Five top Sydney Chinese New Year events were published digitally and across social platforms, achieving 38,600+ organic page views, with an average time on page of 1 min 45 sec.
Newsletter promotion
The City’s Chinese New Year events were promoted to Time Out Sydney’s newsletter database, achieving: over 52,000 newsletter opens and 500+ click-throughs to content.
Social media promotion
We pushed our digital content via Time Out’s Facebook account, which reached over 125,000 people, with over 7,700 post clicks and stirring over 1,000 reactions.
Bonus content!
Like our audience, we just couldn’t get enough of those doggos, and so we created this bonus blog post as an add-on to the campaign.
Guidebook distribution
A total of 50,000 copies were strategically distributed around Sydney, just prior to and during the Festival. Time Out helped the City of Sydney reach the summer tourist market, with 20,000 copies of the Chinese New Year guide carried with Time Out’s Sydney for Visitors product. An additional 30,000 copies were targeted at street level, and through the City of Sydney’s own distribution channels.
Time Out says...
Time Out’s ability to shepherd print guides from commissioning to editing to design and print, all the while liaising with the client on minute details, resulted in an outstanding product in two languages.
Our expertise straddles both traditional print and digital media, and enables us to reach both audiences effectively and affordably.
Time Out’s understanding of how readers plan their outings and consume print and digital media makes us uniquely suited to handling these kinds of custom jobs.
“In 2018 the City collaborated with Time Out to produce Sydney Chinese New Year Festival’s lucky 88-page printed program. With Time Out’s editorial flair and creativity we were able to usher the Year of the Dog with a product that spoke to Sydneysiders in an engaging and informative tone, in both English and Simplified Chinese.”
Tina Lonergan
Global City Marketing Manager, City of Sydney
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