Neptune Festival
The Virginia Beach Neptune Festival is a long-running and much loved series of events celebrating the beach life the Hampton Roads area. Red Orange serves as their marketing partner, working to enhance their brand image and develop a visual style that truly embodies the sun and fun elements it is known for.
Our work features custom illustrations and a new website with intuitive UX and friendly design elements. This was made possible with an up-front focus on content strategy, deliberately putting ourselves in the user’s shoes to think through where and how they might look for information. Technical strategy was also key, as this website is used for both information gathering and transactions like ticket and merchandise sales.
Creative Services
Visual Identity
Content Strategy
Custom Illustration
Marketing Strategy
Milestone Anniversary
Client Background and Goals
The Neptune Festival organization was started 50 years ago and has grown to include 40 events that occur annually between Spring and Fall. However, much of the community doesn’t realize that the Neptune Festival is behind the organization and execution of many of these beloved activities!
The client needed a partner to work alongside their small team to better tell their story while moving toward a fresh, more consistent and defined brand style. A thorough style guide was crucial, as many partner vendors in the past had taken liberties with the use and likeness of the Neptune Festival logo to design merchandise that did not accurately represent the brand.
A Milestone Anniversary
The Neptune Festival was started in 1974, so 2024 is a big year for them! They’ve celebrated 50 years of celebrating sun, sand, and surf — so we were thrilled when they asked us to help craft some visuals to commemorate this momentous occasion!
Custom Illustration and a Fresh Color Palette
We initially started working with the Neptune Festival to design brand assets like event t-shirts that elevated the brand with custom illustrations — making it more diverse, friendly and fun. That same spirit was applied to the design of the website, incorporating not only hand-drawn elements, but bright and vivacious photography and clear visual cues. We then streamlined everything into one defined brand style guide with clear terms of use that the Neptune Festival can use to consistently communicate their guidelines to their team and partners.
“Working with the team at Red Orange has set us up for the next phase of success and growth at our organization. We are truly grateful for their impact!”
— Melanie Gazzolo,
Director of Marketing and Events
Neptune Festival
Collaborative Approach
The Neptune Festival Marketing Director, Melanie, was amazing to work with. She appreciates the importance of brand integrity and has worked alongside our team to help strengthen and streamline the brand visuals. She’s one of those clients that we trust with initial sketches to talk through ideas (even the really rough looking ones!).
Melanie and her team are also very involved in the management of the website, rolling up their sleeves and applying the training we provided to self-service many of the content updates they have. Their team knows we’re only a call or email away if she needs a little extra help — no matter how small the ask. Our relationship is everything a true partnership should be and we are immensely grateful that we get to work with such a great team!
Solution
We designed a responsive, ADA compliant website that was easy for them to update on the backend. Development included an online store for ticket sales and posters, a highly customized event calendar and forms that include payment gateways for vendor payments.
Festival Weekend Results Post Website Launch
122%
Increase in website users
168%
Increase in pageviews
164%
Increase in user direct access
Outcome (Results/ROI)
During the official event weekend (and the week prior to), there was a significant increase in traffic to the Neptune Festival site post-launch of the new design and structure. There was a 122% increase in number of website users and a 168% increase in pageviews. There was a 140% increase in the amount of users entering the site via organic search, and a 164% increase in the number of users accessing the site directly.
