Innovation · entrepreneurship & public sector
Multi-year PR around Upstream Festival and Rotterdam’s innovation ecosystem combined event PR, city promotion, startup storytelling, media relations and stakeholder communication.
Executive summary
Multi-year PR and positioning for Upstream Festival connected event communications to innovation, entrepreneurship and city promotion. The available 2022 media monitoring report recorded 37 media mentions and 1.3 million impressions. The collaboration demonstrably continued in 2023 and was carried out in close relationship with Up!Rotterdam and the Municipality of Rotterdam.
The challenge
Upstream needed to be more than an event that received media attention once a year. The communications challenge was to make the festival, participating entrepreneurs and Rotterdam’s wider innovation ecosystem journalistically relevant at the same time, with attention to awareness, city promotion, ticket sales and stakeholder value.
The strategic question
How do you translate a complex public-private innovation ecosystem into one recognisable media narrative for founders, scale-ups, investors, government and the wider public?
Our approach
We built PR around multiple newsworthy angles instead of relying on a single event announcement. Media were activated around founders, scale-ups, investors, innovation, speakers and the Rotterdam ecosystem. The approach combined press outreach, story pitches, media activations, partner PR, event moments, monitoring and evaluation.
Results
37 media mentions in the available 2022 monitoring report
1.3 million reported impressions in the available 2022 monitoring report
Multi-year PR collaboration, documented in 2022 and 2023
Visibility for both Upstream and the wider Rotterdam innovation ecosystem
Timeline
Multi-year collaboration, demonstrably active in 2022 and 2023, with correspondence referring to an earlier assignment.
Strategic impact
Across multiple editions, the collaboration established a PR foundation around Upstream. The available 2022 monitoring recorded 37 mentions and 1.3 million impressions. PR execution continued in 2023 and work for Upstream Festival was invoiced to the Municipality of Rotterdam. During the 2024 handover, the succeeding PR partner described the foundation that had been built as valuable.
Media & evidence
The 37 mentions and 1.3 million impressions are historical figures from the available 2022 media monitoring report. They are retained as reported monitoring metrics, not presented as independently verified readership.
Our contribution
Event PR · city promotion · startup storytelling · stakeholder communication · media relations · public-private ecosystem positioning
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