With an open market every weekend and a prevailing "fresher is better" mentality across the East Side, this campaign for the '11 Sumer Soulstice just made sense.

This music fest is the only Milwaukee music fest dedicated to the longest day of the year...and it takes more music to fill that longest day...how do you make it happen? Here's one idea...

Summertime street music fests in Milwaukee are about as common as corner bars. So to stand apart from that constant chatter, I led a team that created two simultaneous campaigns on a shoestring budget that not only maintained our position of SS as the only place to celebrate the longest day of free music under the sun with nationally renowned acts, while also engaging the audience in a new and unexpected way: enter Fast Freddy's Air Guitar & Repair.

From online/social networking and nontraditional advertising, to a dedicated East Side mock store front and activated phone line, to promo flyers, character development and character appearances, Fast Freddy helped to raise awareness of the fest by promoting the air guitar demos that were to take place between acts at the event. His website (which received more than 30,000 hits in under one month) was seamlessly linked back to the myspace music page that featured clips from all the performing artists.  By June 21st there were more than 10,000 listens registered, and the buzz generated helped net over 12,000 in attendance for the one-day event and more than $42,000 in sponsorship dollars.