Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma'am - Bambalan's Summer Sessions case study
Bringing some of the world's best DJ talent to Bambalan for their annual series of Summer Sessions!
Bambalan
We’ve been working with Bambalan since they first opened their doors back in 2016, and over the years they’ve fast become known as one of the best party destinations in the city centre which has a lot to do with their famous Summer Sessions!
These are a series of day parties, headlined by DJs from across the world and hosted on Bambalan’s iconic rooftop terrace. We’ve been working with the Bam team to organise these events since they began in 2019, and dare we say it… this summer might have been the biggest and best yet!
Having built a reputation for their Summer Session day parties, the team knew they had to really deliver for summer 2023.
After last year’s wash up session it was agreed that we needed to give the events a new edge by widening the range of music genres and showcasing local Bristol talent alongside the big names, as well as appealing to a more diverse audience than just the house music fans.
What they needed
What we did
We knew that to compete with the ever-growing number of parties and promoters across the city we needed to level things up, so we created a calendar or 10 dates and introduced the team to Rob and Jules, from Central Warehouse. With decades of experience in promotion, festival organisation and venue management between them, and having worked with them on previous projects such as Lost Horizon and Boomtown’s Area 404, we knew these two would have the connections we needed to bring in a broader, more diverse crowd through careful curation and clever programming.
Once dates were confirmed we set about confirming line ups with Jules and Rob, pulling in the likes of turntable legend DJ Koco, dance music icon and meme king Fat Tony and even Mike Skinner from The Streets. As soon as acts were confirmed we briefed our sister agency Hey!What? to create a new brand for the series, and individual posters and social media assets for each event. We also picked up advancing and artist liaison, organising travel, accommodation and riders for all of the artists.
Just some of the line up highlights included…
DJ Koco, Jim Sharp & Mr Thing
Micheal Grey and Melon Bomb
DJ Spoony & Zed Bias
A.Skillz, Krafty Kuts, PLump DJs & Freestylers
Gutterfunk Takeover: Norman Jay MBE, DJ Die, Dismantle & Randall
LTJ Bukem & London Elektricity
Fat Tony & Don’t Tell Your Mother
Mike Skinner
DJ Yoda & The Nextmen
From a marketing perspective organisation and plenty of lead in time for promotion were key. Staggering the event announcement roll outs and juggling the marketing of multiple different events from one account without oversaturating the channels was no easy task, so Clem’s expert paid social skills really came into play here; carefully balancing budgets and managing spends to ensure each event was reaching the right target audiences.
Ahead of event day we created detailed management plans, breaking the day down to the minute, ensuring everyone involved knew exactly what time things were happening, where they needed to be and what they needed to do. This was circulated to all of the artists and agents, so everybody knew the plan.
Bam’s Summer Sessions kicked off on Good Friday, with DJ Koco, all the way from Japan, and closed with a massive sold out sessions with DJ Yoda and The Nextmen on August Bank Holiday Sunday. We were there for every event, working the door and managing timings and artists throughout the day to ensure everything ran like clockwork.
The events resulted in over 3,550 tickets sold, with an overall ticket revenue of around £57,250. On top of that Bambalan saw some record-breaking bar takes, and a huge amount of positive feedback from guests who attended and the artists alike, so much so that several of the acts have been in touch to ask for a booking next year!