Dayton Celtic Festival: Building Awareness and Community Through Paid and Organic Social
To promote Dayton Celtic Festival during summer 2026, BrandAmp combined paid Meta advertising with organic Facebook and Instagram content to showcase the festival, build anticipation and encourage people to explore the programme online.
With free admission, the campaign focused on awareness, engagement and website traffic. Paid video campaigns brought the festival experience to relevant audiences, while organic content highlighted performers, shared practical information and celebrated the community behind the event.
Part 1: Paid Social — Bringing the Festival Experience to Life
Our paid Meta strategy centred on video content showcasing the festival’s music, atmosphere and Celtic identity. We targeted Irish expats and Celtic enthusiasts, supported by lookalike and broad audiences.
Creative included “Turn It Up”, “25 Years of Celtic Magic” and family-focused festival videos, giving audiences a taste of what to expect.
The campaigns delivered:
impressions
people reached
video plays
ThruPlays
completed video views
Approximately 68% of video plays reached full completion, showing that audiences continued watching beyond the opening moments.
The Irish Expats & Celtic Enthusiasts audience generated the greatest volume of video engagement, accounting for approximately 77% of completed views. Lookalike targeting contributed a further 11,780 completed views.
“Turn It Up” was the leading creative by volume, delivering 47,745 completed video views—approximately 71% of the campaign total. The festival anniversary video also resonated, generating 14,193 completed views.
Beyond video consumption, the ads attracted 206 reactions, 63 shares, five comments and two saves. These shares gave audiences a way to introduce the festival to their own networks, supporting word-of-mouth visibility.
Part 2: Organic Social — Turning Festival Content into Conversation
Alongside paid advertising, we published 16 posts across Facebook and Instagram between 11 July and 4 August 2026. The content covered artist spotlights, performance Reels, daily schedules, sponsor recognition, volunteer appreciation and post-event highlights.
Across these posts, content generated 215,600 views and 3,122 interactions. Two schedule posts received paid support; excluding that support, the content delivered:
organic views
organic interactions
Across the full set of posts, including paid support, results also included 308 shares, 170 comments, 106 new follows and 1,059 recorded link clicks.
Practical content proved especially valuable. The Friday schedule was the strongest post overall, with approximately 41,700 views, 489 interactions and 81 shares. The Saturday schedule generated approximately 28,400 views and 415 link clicks, helping audiences find more information and plan their visit. Both posts received paid support, while the Sunday schedule attracted more than 27,500 views organically.
Artist content helped build anticipation, with the Gaelic Storm spotlight generating approximately 25,500 views across Facebook and Instagram.
Community content sustained engagement after the event. The volunteer recognition post attracted approximately 14,900 views and 285 interactions, while the anniversary recap delivered 12,800 views and 343 interactions, including 18 Instagram shares.
Facebook provided most of the visibility, accounting for approximately 94.5% of post views. Instagram contributed almost 19% of interactions from just 5.5% of views, demonstrating the value of its smaller, engaged audience.
Together, paid and organic social gave the festival visibility before the event, helped audiences explore the programme and kept the community engaged afterwards. Paid video delivered scale, while schedules, artist stories and community posts gave people useful and engaging reasons to interact.