How to make your Amsterdam pride experience rock?
More Inclusion and User Needs, proudly together! A case study.
Proudly together! On this project you will get to understand why product marketers and product designers should work closely together from day one when building products. This is a case study about finding and launching a solution to engage users and improve their experience at one of the most awesome but busiest pride festivals of the world. Who else wants to find a quick way to Amsterdam Pride? To enjoy and find a spot at the events and parties during Amsterdam Pride is easy if you do it smart. I would walk you through a solution to make inclusion equal to user needs. This project is about a live feature that allow users to receive guidance to help to spread the people among the crowd, find spots and friends in real time. To find best routes and less crowded spots to be in line for the best to happen during Pride, an interactive map and waiting times included.
Before keep reading, I want to share a fact: This project and the article is dated back to July 2019, when the world wasn’t struggling with COVID-19, back then when I was thinking about the need to spread the crowd during busy festival times, I’d never imagined how crucial such a topic in 2020 would become.
Intro
Pride Amsterdam started out as a party! While in other parts of the world, pride festivals were born as big demonstrations and protests to fight for equal rights, in Amsterdam it was all about the party and celebration together. The event, was ideated and organized by entrepreneurs from the LGBTQ+ community to promote Amsterdam as a pride city and to celebrate the freedom and diversity of the city. Many years later emancipatory content has been added to the pride festival and they have now grown into a whole week event that expresses the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community with a whole range of activities in the fields of debate, art, theatre, film, dance, street parties and even sports.
Amsterdam Pride has become a week to create awareness, to enjoy freedom, equality, love, inclusivity, to be proud of the liberal mindset and lifestyle of the city and celebrate who you are just the way you are!
The Mission
For this project my nomad studio (aka me and my laptop) got to cover a series of roles alone to make sure to deliver a product design and product marketing plan for the next edition of the Amsterdam Pride festival:
- Product Designer and Product Marketing Manager;
- Market, Trend, and User Researcher;
- Brand designer;
- UX copywriting
- Interaction Designer.
A product team has the most success when marketers and designers work closely together, from ideation to execution.
“You can no longer say marketing is what I do at the end. It is what you do at the beginning.” — Seth Godin
Problem
Currently the Amsterdam Pride event loses the love of some visitors, due to the following reasons: There is an overload of visitors during the main events, it gets too busy, too crowded, only if you are lucky you will get to see and enjoy the main attraction, the Canal Parade. People complain that while attending Pride festival what you are most likely to end up doing is just to follow a crowded masa of drunk people that navigates the canal streets, probably you will be missing from your group of friends and getting back home. But well, being honest you would experience all of this but after having a lot of fun thought! So, why not to make this situation just better?
It is known from the locals, that Pride event can get kind of frustrating, but they are really proud of such an event happening in the city and they think that it is still really cool to be part of the festival at least for once in your life and try to enjoy the party as spontaneously as it can get. These are the main insights I got from doing User Research and I challenged myself to find a solution for it having the user needs at the center and meeting the expectations for the business requirements.
The brief, scope and output
The client is asking to launch a microsite with a one-year life cycle for the next year Pride festival edition.
The marketing team has defined for the product launch three stages of use:
- Pre-event,
- During the event,
- Post-event.
The Proposal
This project is about launching an one year microsite. Therefore aligning design and marketing on the story we want to tell at launch was my starting point.
I managed to aligned the project as follow: I think about to start to target each of the project stages mentioned above on the client’s brief.
My main goal is to create for the microsite, specific categories and jobs-to-be-done for the users during the launch of the pre-event, during the event and post-event, based on the needs and findings from User Research. After going throughout this you can find an initial marketing plan for launching the microsite, where I focused on defining main value propositions that make the users happy, building and launching successfully the solution to the market.
The structure of the microsite turned out like this:
- Pre-event: Get Ready! category. Sign up option to register and be the first to get informed about the agenda, full parties and events that would be happening during Pride month.
- During the event: Now in Pride! category. What is happening right now? A live feature that allow users to receive guidance to help to spread the people among the crowd, find spots and friends in real time. Find recommended routes and less crowded spots to be in line for the best to happen, interactive map and waiting times included.
- Post-event: Connect! category. To share stories from people on a Podcast, because Pride it’s all about the community! This would allow users to discover these amazing stories and keep engaged after the event. The mission is to support the pride of everyone by creating community & celebrating self-expression. Let’s talk about it on a Podcast and make users able to support projects from the pride community by donating money through our platform.
The Roadmap
Planning the project:
- Analysis of the event and the present web page;
- Benchmarking, analysis of competitors or similar events in the world;
- Find user personas and test the present web page;
- Lo-fi Prototype for the new product and test it;
- Product Marketing launch plan
Having all this in a row, let’s get the party started!
Understanding
Both Product design and Product marketing should have a deep understanding of the customer and the market:
- Who is this product for?
- What does this product do?
- Why should customers want to use it?
- Why is this product different from what’s out there already?
Market and User Insights
I had focus for this project specifically on users insights, doing market research and acting as a Product Marketing Manager, being the bridge between Research and Marketing departments. Of course users needs are always first! so I went dig quicker and deeper into user needs and problems and aim to give them a valuable perspective for the client.
User Research Phase
During the User Research phase I interviewed users to find out how do locals currently experience the festival, when they use their mobile phones and asked them questions like:
Product Market Analyse
I did market research looking how different pride festivals get celebrated in other famous European capitals around, like Berlin, Paris, Copenhagen, Brussels, Madrid, Rome, and also the most populars from America, in cities like NY, Miami, LA, San Diego, etc. To know how other websites are displaying information, what contents they have. I looked at their advertising, public relations, and social media presence. Do they seek to gain market share? Do they attempt to capture customers? I also looked how other websites look offering similar culture fairs (music, dance & food).
The current Amsterdam Pride website
I conducted a brainstorming session as a way to actually inspire the creative ideas I have for the microsite.
And following the same sense I did organise the main insights from User Research into an affinity map to get this group of ideas together to address better the problem, the challenge and the opportunities for this case.
Ideation
The concept of the project comes above all from the needs of the User Persona and the Jobs-to-be-done that the persona has to achieve on the microsite during different moments. Pre-event, during the event and post-event.
Persona
Meet Eva, a 18 years old young girl from Amsterdam. As a local, Eva wants to celebrate inclusion, equality, diversity, that we are all treated the same, that she lives in a free country where everyone has the right to be themselves, embrace love and self-expression.
User Story:
As a visitor of Pride festival, the user wants to celebrate the party, find a quick way to less crowded spots and events happening.
Job Story:
When user is at Pride festival, user wants to be able to have information beforehand and at the hand (mobiel), be able to navigate the festival and reach friends quickly, to know which spots are less crowded around, check different events information and just celebrate the party.
User wants to be able to receive information live during the festival, to know what to do instead of just following the crowded path or get stuck somewhere without friends or being unable to reach them.
I think that companies can really benefit from using microsites to target specific customers. This is done with the aim to make people complete a certain action, as a microsite is intended to drive specific results for a target. From to showcase a product launch, direct customers with a call-to-action, or for a time-limited promotional campaign.
Eva has 3 main goals:
To be able to be out louder than other days, support the pride community, see happy people and be herself.
To be able to have information beforehand, be able to reach friends, to know which spots are less crowded and check the events information.
To be able to know what to do instead of just to follow the path of the crowd or get stuck somewhere without friends.
What I got to love about microsites are the endlessly creative possibilities that can create for a brand and the same about the value that is delivered to the users:
- Value to deliver: Keeping up with Amsterdam. Get Ready category to target users before the event is happening. We have the privilege of being proud, be first! Receive notifications.
- Value to deliver: Availability to know where to go. Now in Pride category to target users during the event. Best places to go now? Live feature. Interactive map and directions. What to do real time!
- Value to deliver: Connect with network and give support. Connect category to target users after the event. Give them something to talk about it! Network and stories. Make users able to support projects from the pride community by donating money through our platform.
Brand Strategy and Visual Identity
Too often marketers and product designers overlook the connection between product design and brand strategy.
I created these 5 moodboards to get clear about the visual identity aimed to be achieved with the visual design. How I did this? I collected some different creative information and themes from strongest competitors and relevant websites to create a collection of pictures related to that theme. Having the details about the theme, I created colour palettes, a creative puzzle of examples with visual representations of what the microsite could look-a-like, to create a certain style colour inspired and being able to develop later the visual design concept. After that I got the moodboard to test with the users.
The moodboard:
For Amsterdam Pride, I aim to keep the branding, design, and other visual aspects of the microsite congruous with the home site, while at the same time to keep the desired functionality feeling fresh and novel.
Prioritising ideas
Companies can benefit from using microsites to target specific customers. This is done with the aim to make people complete a certain action, as a microsite is intended to drive specific results (established as a target). From to showcase a product launch, direct customers with a call-to-action, or for a time-limited promotional campaign.
The Amsterdam Pride microsite would focus on the following aspects:
Site Map
Once the strategy for each category was clear, the structure for the microsite map was layered out like this:
Wireframing
And I started to wireframe the landing page for mobile version first because it is the preferable device for the users. Specially, because of the live feature that the target users can access during the event, they would have their mobile right by hand to use the information available about spots and what’s happening at the moment.
Go-to-Market Plan
Moving ahead, once the concept was tested and validated with our target users, I designed the following strategies and launch plan to create a funnel to drive awareness, engagement, and product adoption among them.
For pride festival the marketing plan is in sync with the value proposition described in the value proposition canvas showed above.
Pre-launch
- A product marketer’s job is to define the target market and understand the potential customer. Who is this product for?
- The target-users are: Early adopters living in Amsterdam.
- Invite users to be aware. Aim for Awareness and Acquisition at this stage. The main role of the Amsterdam Pride microsite might be to invite visitors to take awareness in the form of a Sign Up -CTA to be the first to get informed about the festival 2020. Receive information about finding the best spots, don’t miss the best parties and receive notifications to keep up with what’s happening live during Amsterdam Pride. This CTA — Sign Up button is supporting users’ needs to provide them with enough detail information about the festival beforehand.
During launch:
- A product marketer’s role is to make users be able to discover the product value and take action. What does this product do for me?
- Activation. At this stage there is an invitation to the user to explore the festival and take action to navigate Amsterdam Pride with a live feature and an interactive map. Who else wants to find a quick way to Amsterdam Pride? Users are able to enjoy and find the best street parties, a spot or their friends on real time, very simple and easy.
Post- launch:
- A product marketer’s job is to allow users to take further action. Why should users want to recommend it? and why is this product different from what’s out there already?
- Focusing on Retention and Referrals. No matter if the party is over! Pride is all about the community. Therefore, we give the community something to talk about. But don’t take only our word for it! Users are able to discover amazing pride stories and project through a Podcast featuring people that are making impact in the world. Users would be encouraged to engage and share them with their connections because we are proudly together celebrating the freedom in our city. The users are invited to take more action, support a project and stand with the community by making a donation.
The Marketing Strategy
I used the AAARRR framework (The Pirate Metrics) as the model to help to design the marketing funnel for the first year launch project of the microsite. The two most important metrics we want to monitor and optimize are Activation and Retention (Retention is King! — If people like using your product and they return to use it, then you will be successful).
Actionable strategy plan:
- First 3 months. Focus on Awareness and Activation (conversion) rate, which means if users are dealing with a real problem and we have a real solution, and we also have a convincing and validated microsite for it, acquisition should start raising as expected.
Activation and Retention are not immediate, but they are the engines to drive new customers to the microsite, and I had like to keep them in mind when building the microsite.
- The second trimester. We want to get more sign-ups, so we look to improve our Activation (visitors) by adding more activation channels or work on SEO to try to get more users to the microsite.
- The third trimester. Increase of the social media campaign. I think that we can provide users with a better picture about the live feature and section on the microsite to help users get started with a first impression so they can properly see the benefits from using this feature during the festival.
- Last trimester. Along with the social media campaign, we will start with the weekly newsletters to get users to listen to the podcast stories and/or eventually make a donation before, during or after pride month.
- During the event, users are able to find what is happening, a spot or their friends on real time. But if our service somehow isn’t delivering the value promise we made, it doesn’t solve their problem or it’s not clear how to use our service, we have an eye on all these metrics to tell us.
- Before and After the event. Finally, we’ll want to measure the success of our launch plan by monitoring customer and internal feedback. Tracking the performance of the launch based on key metrics like adoption and donations. The Podcast strategy would play a significant role to keep users engaged and bringing awareness but also retention around the celebration of freedom.
We want also to check if we are being recommended (Referral) to friends and see if we can put in some social sharing features to increase the number of referrals.
It is part of the plan to invite users to support the community by making donations and this would remain as a source to support projects that need more attention in the community. Donations received are not technically considered revenue, under accounting rules. And donations will be one metric to monitor to measure how effective our strategy is performing.
Retention. Social Media Campaign to share impressions of the network community and projects on social media channels. We aim to keep alive the awesome spirit of the Amsterdam Pride festival during the whole year, therefore the Podcast and connecting users with the stories section would keep engaged our users with the community after the event.
Learnings
- Whatever the nature of your event is, I hope you will consider how a microsite might be an asset to your company.
- Proudly together! Alignment between product design and product marketing is key. It is crucial that product marketers and product designers work closely on doing research and understanding the problem we are solving, defining main value propositions that make the users happy, building and launching the solution to the market.
- Microsites are a good way to strengthen your marketing efforts. However, without a clear understanding of their role, and functions, lack of discovery of the user needs, microsites will be just another gathering of web pages, waiting for their visitors to come. So make it valuable to the user needs and valuable for the business as well!
- For a proper launch a high-fidelity prototype would follow.
Feel free to reach me out and share your thoughts about this project. Anything I could have done better? I would very happy to hear suggestions from you.
💸 Project: Tikkie banking app. Added a new feature into a highly adopted app.
💻 Software I use on a daily base: Sketch, Zeplin, Invision, Principle, Github, Slack, Trello, Miro, Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, among others.
