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Turning festival hype into real-world ticket sales.
Spotlighting the campaigns that delivered exceptional lower-funnel results, this category rewards creativity and strategy that turned inspiration into measurable action.
Reading and Leeds Festival | Mustard Media
For young music fans, Reading & Leeds is more than just a festival. It's a rite of passage. With competition rising and attention spans shrinking, Mustard Media set out to capture that pre-festival anticipation and turn it into action. The challenge: make Reading & Leeds Festival feel unmissable months before the gates opened, and do it in a way that felt totally native to TikTok.
Their TikTok-first strategy tapped into what drives festival culture: excitement, countdowns, and community. Launched in October 2024, they built a year-long funnel designed to convert buzz into bookings. Lead Generation ads captured intent early, while Reach & Frequency campaigns kept anticipation high around each major line-up reveal. Spark Ads were used to amplify organic fan content that resonated most: from creator-led countdowns to hype edits and fan explainers on how to secure tickets.
The result? A campaign that turned fandom into conversion. TikTok delivered 13,592 attributed ticket purchases, achieving a 32.93x ROAS and a record-low £5.28 CPA: Reading & Leeds' best yet. With a 4.53% unique purchase rate, TikTok proved its power to move fans from the For You Page to the festival field.
The campaign earned Mustard Media a place on the Greatest Performance shortlist at the TikTok Ad Awards, the only independent specialist agency recognised alongside global network heavyweights including Havas Media, Dentsu, Brainlabs Digital, Jellyfish, and Whalar UK.
The full shortlist featured work from Ocado, Premier Inn, The Sims (Electronic Arts), Experian, Revlon Cosmetics, Supremacy: World War 3 by Twin Harbour Interactive, Home of Brands by IF. Agency, and American Express with UM and Shook Digital. For a 16-person performance marketing agency to stand in that company on the strength of measurable results speaks to what deep platform expertise and category specialism can achieve at scale.
