When Interesting Things and The Production Co set out to launch Dreamer Light Festival, they needed more than awareness.

They needed to bring a brand-new event to market, build momentum quickly, drive ticket sales, and position Dreamer as a must-visit experience for Aucklanders and visitors alike.

With a short runway to launch, the challenge was to move fast while balancing multiple campaign objectives: building local awareness, reaching audiences across key regional markets, and turning interest into ticket sales.

Pop That was brought in to lead the paid digital advertising strategy, working alongside the Dreamer team and 818 Entertainment, who managed public relations activity.

Together, the focus was clear: create a connected full-funnel campaign that helped people discover Dreamer, understand the experience, and feel excited enough to book.

Building Momentum

To support the launch, we developed and managed a full-funnel digital advertising strategy across Meta, Google and TikTok.

Each platform had a clear role to play.

Meta helped drive awareness, engagement and ticket sales at scale.

Google captured high-intent audiences actively searching for things to do in Auckland, especially during the school holiday period.

TikTok introduced Dreamer to new audiences and helped support regional reach objectives.

A key part of the strategy was ensuring a meaningful proportion of media investment reached audiences outside Auckland. With tailored creative and messaging, we positioned Dreamer as a destination experience, encouraging regional audiences to make the trip into the city.

Throughout the campaign, we continuously refined audiences, creative and budget allocation to improve performance. Authentic, direct-to-camera content and behind-the-scenes updates became some of the strongest-performing assets, helping build excitement and maintain momentum as opening day approached.

To strengthen reporting and future optimisation, we also implemented Meta’s Conversions API, improving visibility into campaign performance and increasing reported conversions by 68.3%.

The Results

The campaign helped launch Dreamer into market, building awareness, driving traffic, and supporting ticket sales throughout the event period.

Campaign highlights included:

• 2.6M+ impressions delivered
• 25,000+ landing page views
• 68.3% increase in reported conversions through improved tracking
• Regional audience targets successfully achieved
• Strong attendance and sold-out sessions across the event period

Most importantly, Dreamer welcomed approximately 20,000 attendees, demonstrating strong audience demand for a brand-new event and creating a solid foundation for future activations.

The project also showed the value of a connected marketing approach, bringing together paid media, public relations, content and audience strategy to create a smoother customer journey from discovery through to attendance.

Client Feedback

“I was genuinely impressed with everything you guys did. Your team was incredibly responsive, gave us the opportunity to tweak things as we went, and were professional throughout the entire process.

You brought a whole other level of expertise and knowledge to the table—things I simply wasn’t able to do myself. There’s no way I could have achieved the same outcome as you guys did.”

- Jamie Newman, Interesting Things

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