The Andy Thomas Space Foundation

The Andy Thomas Space Foundation (ATSF) promotes and supports the highest quality space activities in Australia by progressing education, research and innovation.

The Foundation reached out to Fig Tree to develop and implement a four week social media advertising campaign to generate registrations for the prestigious Australian Space Forum, Australia’s largest space industry exhibition. This event attracts attendees from across the globe, including top advisors and delegations from space agencies in other countries.

Our brief was to achieve 800 registrations along with ensuring recognition of key partners including sponsors, speakers and exhibitors at the event, and developing shareable content for these stakeholders.

Two priorities of the Andy Thomas Space Foundation are to advance space education and raise awareness of the connections between space science and technologies and our everyday lives.

These priorities became pillars for the comprehensive schedule of paid social media advertising, combined with an audience focus on key professionals working within the space industry and the wider Australian community with an interest in space, technology and their impact on daily life.

Maximising the digital mix to drive conference sales

Fig Tree’s campaign included use of provided branding and leveraging this across a paid and organic digital campaign to ensure the brand elements were leveraged creatively while maintaining consistency. We knew we were shooting for the moon on a modest budget.

We targeted a Meta and LinkedIn campaign to key states in Australia and adapted existing branding to four variants for the paid digital campaign, commencing with the headline announcement of participation in the event by the first ever astronaut to gain her professional astronaut qualifications under the Australian flag, Katherine Bennell-Pegg. Content was also created to promote keynote speakers, acknowledge over 120 exhibitors, and static posts linked to the full event program.

The paid digital campaign was supported by a busy and comprehensive campaign of organic content on LinkedIn and Meta. Once the 17th Australian Space Forum was underway, Fig Tree added real time event content to the mix. This content also showcased key components of the event such as the Australian Space Passport program for school students, along multiple reels recognising and acknowledging event exhibitors and sponsors.

Once the event was underway, Fig Tree switched focus to leveraging real time content development and posting live from the event with social media content. The client tells us this positively impacted late registrations as high quality website and social media content particularly connected with industry professionals interstate who made the decision to come to Adelaide to make the most of rare opportunities to hear from global experts.

The results

The campaign reached 430,000 views with 7,784 combined clicks, driving registrations to reach 798 in just 27 days. Professional connections were sparked by sharable content such as the exhibitors and sponsors acknowledgement reels, which were widely reshared by the participants.

Feedback from the Foundation revealed that the exhibitors and sponsors reels were instrumental in a significant number of interstate attendees making the decision to come to Adelaide even after the event was underway.

The timeframe was tight, with only four weeks before the actual event took place to develop and implement our plan. From the outset, Fig Tree was focused on maximising the value of the available budget for the Andy Thomas Space Foundation. This was an intense schedule, subject to rapid change, for the largest space event in the Australian calendar. We worked closely with the Foundation across all aspects of the campaign, managing approval processes, liaising with organisational representatives and being on call for arising issues and concerns.

Space was certainly a new frontier for Fig Tree when we began work on this campaign. Along with the satisfaction of the campaign outcomes and a much deeper understanding of how important the space industry is to our everyday lives, the Fig Tree team are now dedicated supporters of South Australia’s deserved international reputation for excellence in this industry.