Youth

Sydney Film Festival is New South Wales' pre-eminent showcase for contemporary cinema from Australia and around the world. Established in 1954, Sydney Film Festival is a major cultural event on the city’s social calendar and one of the world’s longest running film festivals.

Precinct was engaged in 2006 to develop a new brand strategy to revitalize the image of the festival. The main objective was to broaden the audience reach by showing the festival to be dynamic, inclusive and diverse, moving away from any perception that Sydney Film Festival was an old-fashioned, subscription-based organization. Precinct devised a three-step, three-year process to achieve this. Mindful of the sophisticated and diverse creative community, Precinct developed a replenishment plan that built on the festival’s history to attract and retain a new generation of festival-goers. Key industry stakeholders were canvassed to define what the festival needed to prioritize in order to achieve its strategic objectives. We worked with the festival’s management and creative team to understand the future direction of the festival and how the brand would best leverage and position a new vision.

Precinct delivered a fresh brand that incorporated ‘tone of voice,’ logo and positioning in the marketplace. The first year of the strategy launched and positioned the new brand. The second year consolidated the position of the festival in the state’s capital and by 2008 Sydney Film Festival was well placed to launch its inaugural Sydney Film Prize competition. As evidence of the success of the re-brand, attendances grew from 2006 to 2008 and the brand enjoyed a significantly increased presence across the city, with a highly visible and synergistic campaign. Precinct is proud of our achievements with the Sydney Film Festival brand, which now sees the festival as a key destination on the global film festival circuit.