Gretna Fest
Entertainment
Turning the Westbank into the #Festbank.
What started as a small community event in 1994, Gretna Fest has evolved into a premier music and cultural festival that not only represents the City of Gretna, but the entire parish and region. Today the festival features both national headliners and premier local musicians, and the party keeps rolling across 3 days with 75,000+ attendees each year. Deep Fried was given the opportunity to reimagine the brand — to honor its traditions, while ushering in a new era for the festival. With a new logo, website, festival posters, video, custom animations, and social media content and management, we worked with the client to attract an evolving audience with a groovier, more recognizable brand.
Brand Identity & Tagline
As Gretna Fest emerged out of a brief hiatus due to the pandemic and approached 30 years in the community, it was the perfect time for the fest to rebrand and create a more modern identity. The new look would have to satisfy the loyalists, but the festival was ready for growth and to welcome a new generation of attendees as well.
The new mark capitalized on the proximity of the Mississippi River and seamlessly incorporated the iconic river bend shape. That shape, which can be seen in the “t” has now been used across countless pieces of creative for the festival. When attendees see it, they know it’s time to Revel on The River!
Creative
Outside of the performances themselves, one of the best parts of music festivals for fans is the initial lineup and poster reveal across social and digital channels. For Gretna Fest’s 2023 poster, the Deep Fried team focused on Old Gretna’s best-known landmark, the Jefferson Memorial Arch. The result was a funky design that mixed tradition with new energy.
The poster design was also nimble – translating from print, to the website, to digital, and on social channels. Whether you opened your Instagram feed or walked into an Old Gretna restaurant, the poster was everywhere!
Video
We believe that every marketing strategy needs to consider video content these days, and that is especially true when it comes to festival marketing. For Gretna Fest, we deployed several different pieces of video content and animation, with the most prominent being the overall festival hype video. Showcasing the main acts and the overall vibe, this video was responsible for selling the festival to audiences ahead of time and even entertaining the crowd in-between sets at the fest.
Website Development
In recent years, Gretna Fest has embraced technology on the ground at the fest, so it only made sense that it needed an updated home online also. The Deep Fried interactive design and web development team sought out to create not only a visually stunning website, but one that is user-friendly.
The result is a responsive site that is deep with content, but also gives the user the ability to get in and purchase tickets quickly. Video and photography play a huge role and the website has a look and feel that is meant to mirror the experience on the ground.
Digital & Social
Every festival has a voice, and Gretna’s is truly unique. As projects were completed, artists were being announced, and as the bands kicked off the fest, our social media and digital team was hard at work to promote the festival and develop that brand voice that would carry on for years to come. Our team deployed both organic and paid strategies that included graphics, videos, and on-site activation to promote the festival in real-time and capture content to help with future creative production.
The social approach included Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Not only did we leverage our own content, but recruited and paired with local influencers on a successful earned media approach.
