Artisan Drinks on their Barcode Festival brand boost
Artisan Drinks attended Barcode Festival for the first time this year and have already booked their space for 2024. The Artisan team explains how attending Barcode Festival helped get their brand in front of key industry colleagues, making the most of the unique ‘festibition’ atmosphere.
Barcode Festival brings together thousands of industry colleagues and over 300 FMCG businesses, featuring headline music, outstanding entertainment, and exciting brand activations. It is the place to meet thousands of colleagues, make new business connections and experience some of the latest and greatest product launches in the industry.
The wide variety of sponsorship packages range from XL Activations to Roaming Ambassadors and make the event accessible for organisations of any size. Artisan Drinks grabbed this opportunity with both hands at Barcode 2023, taking an Incubator Activation and have already upgraded to a medium activation for the 2024 event, which takes place on 4th July 2024.
We caught up with Laurence Hinton, Head of Marketing at Artisan Drinks, to understand how Barcode helped the business.
Can you explain the benefits to your brand of being at Barcode 2023?
Barcode helped with brand awareness in the Grocery sector where we’ve struggled to get cut through before which was a huge benefit. This has led to meetings with buyers; both at the festival and afterwards, with some conversations ongoing. It also gave us an opportunity to partner with a lot more spirit partners to put on a comprehensive offering on the bar. We saw some of our suppliers, eg. Smurfitt Kappa, who we’ve been in conversations with since Barcode. And, of course, seeing old colleagues in their new roles was amazing to see!
Why are you coming back to Barcode 2024?
Not only did we have a great time at Barcode 2023, but we also met a considerable number of buyers in Grocery. They all seemed to really enjoy our stand and our game, as well as our drinks obviously! We’re coming back to impress grocery buyers again, with a new Artisan Drinks masterpiece.
Why have you upgraded your activation from Incubator to Medium for Barcode 2024?
The 3x3 stand we had as an Incubator Activation was great, and it gave us a good introduction to Barcode Festival. It was a wonderful problem to have, but we had a fairly sizeable queue for the majority of the event, so practically we need the extra space just to have more people serving drinks!
I also want to have something creative and fun that we can bring to Barcode 2024, and we need the extra space to achieve what we want here.
What do you aim to achieve at Barcode 2024?
Artisan Drinks is all about unleashing the artist within everyone. So, we’ll be encouraging a lot of interaction, a lot of artistry and a huge combined effort to create a masterpiece at Barcode 2024.
Can you explain how Barcode differs from other trade shows?
It’s a trade show like no other I’ve been to. A trade show, with really relevant buyers, that are enjoying themselves at an event in an incredible location. A true festival setting with loads of roaming entertainment, loads of cool activations, photo opportunities and celebrity chefs, TV hosts and incredible entertainment in the evening.
The only trade show that should have a red carpet when you walk in.
If you would like to learn more about Barcode Festival or see how you could activate your brand at the event, visit the Activate Your Brand page.
