Helloprinters in action: Summer Carnival Rotterdam Unlimited

For 5 days, the vibrant city Rotterdam transforms into an even more colourful and dynamic area as people fill the streets for the Rotterdam Summer Carnival. This year (2019) all of us at Helloprint wanted to join the party and contribute to the fun, but before we get into that, let’s talk about the incredible Carnival and how it originated:

Rotterdam Unlimited 

The Rotterdam Summer Carnival is one of the biggest street festivals in Europe. Rotterdam is a highly vibrant city, which is the home of a wide variety of cultures. It is a carnival, where everybody gathers to have fun, dance around to some good music and eat a lot of food. With the many events that RU hosts, everybody has the time of their lives.

Origin

The official launch of the Rotterdam Unlimited Summer Carnival as we know it today took place in 2013. However, the carnival has its origins already in 1977, when people started gathering around the statue of Tollens, a Dutch poet, to recite poems. Furthermore, around 1992, the Wereld Museum created a festival to celebrate the diversity of cultures in Rotterdam. The two celebrations merged to form the Dunya Festival in 1995. At the same time, the Summer Carnival since, which dated back to 1983, was gaining national recognition. As a result, in 2013, the Dunya festival and the Summer festival were merged and given the name Rotterdam Unlimited.

Social Cohesion

An amazing achievement of the RU is that it’s one of the festivals with proven results in improving social cohesion. Representatives of the festival partnered up with Erasmus University to research into the impact of the parade and concluded that there is evidence, which demonstrated that it is truly an event that improves community cohesion. 

We came in like a beach ball

In true Helloprint fashion, we simply couldn’t skip such an amazing opportunity to have a little fun. After all, the parade was scheduled to pass right under the windows of our headquarters office in Rotterdam. We gathered our forces and started working on our guerilla marketing plan.

At first, one of us said  “What’s more summery than beach balls?” and an idea was born. Our plan was to blow up 300 beach balls and give them out to everybody. We had a lot of fun interacting with people both participating in and watching the parade. But, what’s more important, a number of kids and adults had a great time trying to catch all the balls flying out from our windows. It just goes to show that a little effort can make people smile.

We managed to bring a little laughter to everybody in the streets and the Helloprint beach balls started appearing in various areas in Rotterdam, so mission accomplished! It really goes to show that you can carry out a fun guerilla marketing project, on a really small budget with only a hilarious printed item and some positive energy. 

We hope our project made you laugh and inspired you to venture into your own guerilla marketing. What are some creative guerilla marketing strategies you used this summer? Let us know in the comments down below.