461K Views, One Sold Out Event
An event has one deadline and no second chance. BC CrabFest happens on a single day, July 18th, and every ticket and every crab bucket has to move before then. Awareness that arrives on July 19th is worth nothing.
We started building the social presence at the end of April, roughly eleven weeks out. By event day the account had pulled 461,024 views, grown its following by over 40%, and CrabFest had sold out of buckets entirely.
The Outcome
Sold out of buckets.
Confirmed by BC CrabFestCrabFest confirmed the 2026 event sold out of crab buckets completely. That is the only number that ever really mattered here, and it is the one the other 461,024 were working toward.
Everything that follows is how it happened, from the creative that carried it to the ninety days of numbers underneath.
The Creative
Sell the day, not the date.
The content that travelled was not the content listing times and ticket links. It was the food, the crowd, the weather, the feeling of a summer afternoon on the water. The details still needed saying, but they were never the hook.
Filming and shooting the event itself closed the loop. What was captured on July 18th becomes the proof for everything that follows, so CrabFest owns a library of its own day rather than renting a stock version of it.
The Challenge
Eleven weeks to fill a single day.
BC CrabFest came to us in 2026 with three goals: increase exposure, build awareness, and drive attendance to the event on July 18th. All three had to happen inside one short window, because an event campaign cannot be optimised over a year. It either works before the gates open or it does not work.
Traditional event promotion tends to shout the details. Date, place, tickets, repeat. That reaches the people already looking for it and stops there, which is fine for awareness and useless for growth.
So we built the account around the experience instead of the logistics. Relatable, experience-driven content that showed people what the day actually feels like, made to travel past the existing following and land with someone who had never heard of CrabFest.
The Work
Everything the feed needed, in house.
Social Management
Full ownership of the channel: strategy, posting cadence, and community engagement in the run-up to the event and through the day itself.
Content Creation
Experience-led content built for reach rather than announcement, shaped around what makes someone want to be there.
Graphic Design
Creating visuals for social and digital assets using their branded elements and voice.
Event Coverage
Video and photography shot on site on July 18th, feeding the live coverage on the day and the owned library that promotes next year's event.
July 18th, on site.
Shot for the feed and the 2027 library.
Where The Reach Came From
82% of views came from people who did not follow the account.
For an event, preaching to existing followers is the failure case. Those people were coming anyway. The number that decides whether you sell out is how far past that circle the content travels, and four out of every five views landed with someone new.
The Numbers
Ninety days, measured.
Reporting period: May 7 to August 4, 2026. Event day: July 18.
Account
90 DaysAudience
GrowthFormat figures are Instagram's views-by-content-type breakdown, reported separately from the account total.