Sydney Film Festival

Striking a rare balance
Coming out of covid in 2023, the immersive experience of cinema has been lost to streaming at home. When a movie is projected up on the big screen, and we’re in the dark surrounded by top quality sound, we don’t just see a movie - we feel it all over. Our rebrand, brand platform and campaign for the Sydney Film Festival 2023 celebrated everything wonderful about seeing and feeling the emotion of movies at the cinema. 

SEE IT ALL
Centred on simple word play, the SEE IT ALL platform has endless potential to be extended and customised across genres and languages, making it accessible to diverse audiences. In post-event analysis, Sydney Film Festival reports first time attendees (+17% YoY) and brand recall (85%) were at an all-time high, with an impressive 73% of those surveyed preferring the new branding to the year previous. 

Rolling into 2024
We’ve grown brand equity by evolving the 2023 Campaign Platform, SEE IT ALL, for 2024, with a focus on more diverse engagement with visitors from a wider variety of backgrounds. Initially we looked at which elements of our design system we were most excited about refreshing, what worked and how we could we make it feel fresh. Everything from a larger space for film stills, more gold, a new SEE IT ALL statement and an evolved design system, typography and motion principles were all under consideration. By introducing the film ticker device, we were able to introduce each film in more detail, cropping in to feel as though we’re looking at different views of the film. Seeing film in a fresh way from different angles.  

SEE IT YOUR WAY
The bravery to double down on the SEE IT ALL campaign line with SEE IT YOUR WAY enabled boundary-pushing creativity and generated a creatively agile campaign that is dynamic on its own, but also builds on the equity of the 2023 season. The one thing that’s better than seeing it all, is seeing it your way. Post-event analysis for 2024 reports an increase in cinema audiences (+10% YoY), online audience (+34% YoY) and increased reach across social channels (+30% — 150% across channels). 

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"Around the globe, Film Festivals have been closing down, retracting their programs, and failing to claim younger audiences. At Sydney Film Festival, we are proud to have increased our audience by over 30% in the two years since we’ve partnered with the Frost*collective, bucking a global trend. We’re also seeing an increase in the diversity of our audience, and more young people attending, which was one of the chief goals of our partnership. Frost* have consistently risen to every challenge in making us a recognisable and exciting brand, that still feels fresh each year. We’ve got hundreds of different stories to tell at the Festival, and Frost* brilliantly celebrate the multitudes on offer, all within the casing of the strong single brand story of SFF. A delicate balancing act they execute with aplomb."

Joshua Forward, Head of Marketing, Sydney Film Festival 


"As SFF’s new CEO I was blown away by the thought-provoking design presented by Frost*, I’ve worked with designers around the globe but instantly recognised this innovative campaign as matching Sydney Film Festival’s vision. It presents a dynamic call out to Sydneysiders to come and experience cinema in community, as it was originally intended, and reignites the energy of a crowd connecting to stories on the screen. Thanks Frost* for wholeheartedly capturing SFF’s vision."

Frances Wallace, CEO, Sydney Film Festival