Festivals, cultural institutions, mission-led organizations, and the artists they platform. Earned coverage that reaches funders, boards, sponsors, and the audiences who actually show up.
Cultural work has two audiences who never meet. The people who turn up, and the people who fund it. Press that thrills one can be worthless to the other, and most agencies only ever optimize for the first.
For a festival the window is unforgiving. Lineup, ticket pushes, sponsor announcements and press all have to land in sequence before the gate opens. A placement the week after the event is a souvenir, not a result.
For an institution or a non-profit the clock is the funding cycle instead. Coverage that reaches a program officer or a board in the month before a decision is worth more than ten lifestyle mentions in the month after.
So we build the two lists separately, run them on their own calendars, and look for the stories that serve both. That is the part that takes twenty years of relationships rather than a media database subscription.
Lineup and ticket announcements, sponsor visibility, press accreditation, creator hosting, and the content capture that keeps the event earning after the last set.
The run-up is planned backwards from the gate. Everything has a date and a reason to exist on that date.
Clients include CurlFest and Creole Fest.
Organizations that exist to put other people’s work in front of an audience. The press job is to carry the artists and the mission in the same story, because coverage of the organization alone does nothing for the people it platforms.
The Fearless Artist platforms under-represented visual artists and painters, so the work is built around getting the painters written about, not the program that shows them.
Clients include The Fearless Artist.
Coverage aimed at funders, boards and partners rather than at applause. Program milestones, impact storytelling, and the founder positioning that gets an organization into the room.
Girl Build teaches young women how to build homes. Most non-profits here also sit in a second market and are planned for both at once: Music Brings Life in health and wellness, where it builds sickle cell awareness through music culture, and Fashion Week Brooklyn in fashion, where it runs Brooklyn runway shows during New York Fashion Week for up-and-coming designers.
Clients include Girl Build, Music Brings Life, Fashion Week Brooklyn and The Fearless Artist.
Creole Fest is a current festival client. Its case study is in production.
Twelve weeks out for national and trade, four to six for local and broadcast, and the lineup announcement anchors everything else. If you come to us three weeks before the gate we will tell you honestly what is still reachable and what is not, rather than take a retainer for a window that has closed.
Yes, and most of the non-profit work here runs that way. A narrower scope rather than a discounted version of the same plan, usually one funding cycle, one flagship story and the founder positioning around it, rather than a year-round program. We would rather do one thing properly than spread a small budget across four.
It is the most direct use of it. A sponsor is buying the audience and the association, and documented coverage is the evidence both exist. On CurlFest 2026 we brought the sponsor ourselves: Golden Krust came on as official sponsor and backstage food partner through a relationship we already held, alongside four community partners, while the press campaign ran 18 placements across 14 outlets. The coverage and the sponsorship were the same conversation.
Gate and sponsor renewal are the real measures, and we ask for both. Alongside them we report placements, broadcast segments and the earned social the event generates, because those are what a sponsor deck needs next year.
The white paper goes past the case studies: how we build a festival press run-up week by week, how sponsor visibility is earned rather than bought, and how the work is measured against gate and funding rather than clip count.
Attention, awareness, relevance, consideration. Most brands lose it at one of the four.
Get in Touch