MidPoint Music Festival
+
Marking its 10th anniversary in 2011, Cincinnati’s MidPoint Music Festival (MPMF) has developed a reputation as the place to listen to up and coming independent bands. Many of its performers have been recognized in year-end lists for such accomplishments as Best Album or Best New Artist in major music publications such as Spin, Fader, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone. MPMF has evolved into the Midwest’s version of SXSW, maintaining a consistent focus on music but expanding to include a variety of art and community programming.
Creating the Experience
Topic has supported MPMF for three consecutive years, serving as its official creative partner. In 2009 we established a relationship with City Beat Events, the festival’s production company, and we set out to reposition the festival from a small locally focused event to a regional festival with international drawing power.
For Topic, MPMF is a great example of what can be achieved when you establish client confidence in a partnership. From the onset, the festival's producers gave us the autonomy to address their marketing needs, to conceive and deliver strategies and executions as we saw fit. The results of this unrestricted relationship are many, including the creation of the festival's recognizable equities—its logo, its icon Monty, and its digital and social media presence.
MPMF.com is the official online resource for communicating all festival information, for developing community engagement initiatives, and for sponsor promotion. The original site we produced was designed to introduce, express and consistently support the festival’s new identity, voice and vision, to connect independent music enthusiasts with one another and with the artists,and to leverage its reach for attracting and retaining sponsors, partners, venues, volunteers and other community assets. In each of the subsequent years of our partnership, Topic has restyled the interface to compliment the annual theme we develop for the festival. Likewise, we have continually worked on improvements to the backend system that not only administers the site but also serves as the festival’s operations hub.
LIVE.MPMF.COM is a pure form of enabling community-engagement by leveraging social media.
Another notable contribution Topic has made to MPMF is the tweet/text visualizer displayed at venues, and allowing for real-time peer-to-peer connectivity and communication throughout the festival. LIVE.MPMF.COM is a pure form of enabling community-engagement by leveraging social media. And as visually appealing as we make it, the real beauty of it is that it becomes a festival performance unto itself.
Results
