SkyFest was an epic, collaborative, wild experiment in music culture that united, amplified and elevated two core components of partying – music and lights – for a live and digital audience.

Our sky high festival, set against the backdrop of the Pyrenees, was hosted by Desperados alongside party legends Elrow. World renowned DJs (Jackmaster, Honey Dijon, Paco Osuna) performed high above the ground to thousands of party-goers, as we transformed 7 balloons into a unique festival party experience: the world’s first hot air balloon electronic light orchestra.

For 1,500 party-goers on the ground, this was a new frontier in sound, light and festival culture. In the balloons, 250 specially-invited influencers become part of this world-first party experience that only Desperados could pull off. This live experience formed the basis for breakthrough digital assets and experiences, across multiple channels and touchpoints, allowing party-lovers worldwide a taste of Desperados authentic party culture.

A 6 month campaign built awareness with party-goers in 12 countries and identified 250 local influential Scene Makers from around the world to be part of the Sky Fest experiment, to participating in and amplify the Desperados’ activation.

On 15th September, our influencers and partygoers were welcomed into an immersive Elrow party experience, as we fired up our live feed and shared Instagram stories from Desperados, Elrow and hundreds of user-generated posts.

The set-up, festival and experiment provided the basis for a multi-channel suite of assets for Desperados markets which were launched online in November 2017, promptly gathering 67m views. The hero film captured the DJs anticipation and excitement during their sky-high performance. A variety of short films showed different perspective (elrow, our DJs, the production). We widened participation with an immersive Facebook Canvas experience; iconic sharable imagery; and a YouTube hack where consumers could ‘play’ the installation at home.

SkyFest was a smash hit with fans, generating global PR with music and youth culture publications bringing Desperados long term credibility. Resident Advisor, the leading electronic music platform called SkyFest “a once in a lifetime immersive experience” and the video shared on their Facebook was one of their best performing videos of the whole year out of the hundreds of nights and festivals that they report on.

With over 67,000,000 million views, SkyFest was Desperados most watched and shared content, ever, with completion rates outperforming benchmarks by 20%, and generated engagement rates surpassing previous campaigns by over 170%. There were 729.9k engagements with #skyfest and #desperados, 305.9 million potential reach, and 250K video views through elbows Skyfest coverage.

SkyFest contributed to over 8.2% of Year on Year European sales growth in the beer category, compared to an industry average that decrease 0.2%.