Cacciucco Pride

Tourism marketing through an event transformed into a territorial brand

Zaki > Case studies > Cacciucco Pride

Cacciucco Pride

Building and boosting the brand awareness of a food-and-wine festival beyond the boundaries of its core audience.

Skills
Content creation
Digital product design
Front/back end development
Integrated marketing
Marketing analysis
Strategic branding

Services
Brand strategy
Brand design
Content strategy
Content production
UX/UI design
Social media campaign
Community management
Press campaign and outdoor advertising

Year
2017 - 2021

Building and boosting the brand awareness of a food-and-wine festival beyond the boundaries of its core audience.

When we were asked to craft the image of an event celebrating Cacciucco, as true Livorno locals, we were thrilled. Starting from a blank page, we began with the name. Among our proposals, Cacciucco Pride shone like a star and, fortunately, won everyone over right away. That’s how one of the events that—thanks to the communication designed by Zaki—would soon become one of the most distinctive and well-known occasions in the city of Livorno was born.

Thanks to the viral power of the “Polpobaffi”, Cacciucco Pride immediately captured the Livorno locals’ ironic spirit, turning them into the event’s first ambassadors. In a short time—also thanks to a very aggressive social media marketing strategy and the production of ironic photo and video contents focused on emotion and identity uniqueness—engagement grew exponentially, reaching far beyond Tuscany, the geographic area identified as the primary target.

From that moment on, the editorial team we set up to cover the event live collected, produced, curated, and published thousands of “octopus-mustached selfies or portraits,” some coming from the most far-flung places in the world—from New York to India, from Australia to Canada, from South America to Russia, from Norway to South Africa.

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The client

Conceived by the city administration, Cacciucco Pride is the first true food festival of the city of Livorno. Born as a festival intended to celebrate its signature dish—Cacciucco—it has gradually become a lever to promote the city beyond its borders, showcasing it in its entirety through the most immediate and universal channel of social connection: food.

Dining, therefore, with plenty of opportunities to taste authentic Livorno-style Cacciucco—the Certificato 5C version—as well as other traditional dishes of the local culinary heritage, but also shows, events, and initiatives designed to explore the city in all its dimensions, attractions, and facets.

The challenge

The Cacciucco, born as a “poor man’s dish” made from leftover catch that the wives of Livorno fishermen would put on the table to feed the family, is undoubtedly the signature recipe of Livorno’s culinary tradition. The real challenge, starting with the choice of name, was to present Cacciucco Pride as a modern and cosmopolitan food-and-wine event, elevating its perception above the countless local festivals—more or less well attended—held every year in Tuscany.

Goals:

Create the brand essence and brand identity of Cacciucco Pride.
Enhance the event’s perceived quality from a tourism perspective compared to other food-and-wine festivals.
Provide Cacciucco Pride with all the online and offline communication tools needed to engage with all its key audiences.
Promote the event across all relevant channels.
In the medium term, achieve brand awareness levels that are competitive with national food-and-wine festivals.
Manage the event’s communication in real time during the days of live programming.

The solutions

As long as we managed the event’s marketing—from the naming to the very last post produced—our agency handled the creation of every single communication tool and activity, taking care of every detail:

Naming and event brand design.
Development of the brand strategy and content strategy.
Creation of all textual, photographic, and video contents.
Design, management, and updating of the website and all digital tools.
Production of editorial plans; launch, management, and publishing across social channels.
Design and management of social campaigns.
Design and production of all offline and online communication tools.
Organization and management of the editorial team and press office activities.
Design and management of outdoor advertising as outlined in the media plan.

Considering that the festival took place over just 3 days each year, from 2017 to 2021 the results achieved were truly remarkable. Just to mention a few figures:

1st food-and-wine festival in Tuscany by Facebook notoriety.
16th food-and-wine festival in Italy by Facebook notoriety.
Over 2 million average annual views of the contents associated with the page.
Approx. 1.2 million average annual impressions across campaigns.
Over 1 million annual views of ads and videos.