How SimpleCrew Helped BUKU Foster the BUKU Grassroots Community through Street Team Accountability
Industry:
Music Festival Marketing
Location:
New Orleans, Louisiana
Challenge:
Didn’t want to be boxed into other rigid solutions. Had no way to hold team members accountable.
Solution:
Have systems of accountability to help with rewarding team members. Street team members have a default way of documenting their work.
Result:
The BUKU marketing team is able to justify street team spend, get more granular with rewards and remain accountable as they expand their street team into other markets.
BUKU Music + Art Project
BUKU is a two-day music and arts festival founded in 2012 by Winter Circle Productions and held annually at Mardi Gras World in New Orleans. BUKU hosts a range of genres from EDM to hip hop to indie rock with past performances like Bassnectar, Kid Cudi, Alt-J, MGMT, Travis Scott, Illenium, hundreds of others.
The BUKU marketing team runs street team campaigns in New Orleans and other markets including Denver, New York City, Chicago, Orlando and others to grow and foster the national BUKU community.
The Challenge
The team needed a way to track their street team promotions and hold their team members completely accountable for their work. The criteria they were looking for was a flexible solution that they could mold to fit their strategy.
When Lauren began working with BUKU, her team was already using SimpleCrew. But having worked with other street teams in the past, she noticed right away the one thing that made BUKU’s street team so unique: accountability via SimpleCrew.
Ultimately, they decided to stick with using SimpleCrew.
Her past street teams were rewarding team members with free tickets, merch, meet and greets or late-night access to after-shows without any way of verifying that they actually did their work.
Team members would lie about where they posted flyers or manipulate the system because they knew their manager wouldn’t find out. This slowed campaign results and damaged trust between managers and team members.
The Solution
Lauren and her team use SimpleCrew’s photo uploads to determine the best ways to reward their street team members.
Taran Cornejo, who works closely with Lauren on BUKU, said that the accountability and photo sharing through SimpleCrew doesn’t only help the marketing team, but the team members love it too.
SimpleCrew helps Taran and Lauren provide a system where street team members can document their work and connect more deeply with their peers — which allows them to justify rewards.
The Result
Lauren was even able to use SimpleCrew to correlate street team promotions with ticket sales.
According to Taran, building up systems of accountability and trust has allowed them to expand the street team to other geographic areas. BUKU started local in 2012 but has since expanded their marketing reach to other markets.
And in a space that’s dominated by digital marketing, BUKU — which is a boutique music festival —still really focuses on grassroots engagement along with social media. SimpleCrew helps them bring accountability into both channels.
