The National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain is the most significant event in the Banding world calendar — a 60-year fixture at the Royal Albert Hall that represents the pinnacle of achievement for brass bands across the country. Attendance figures have been falling, and the Championships faced a perception problem familiar to many heritage events: widely beloved within the banding world, but largely invisible beyond it. Brass banding is in reality an increasingly accessible, inclusive and diverse community — but the outside world still too often pictured it as a pursuit for older audiences. Mobius was brought in to change that — building the profile of the event with a wider range of people, attracting younger and more diverse audiences and driving ticket sales to hit the Royal Albert Hall's ambitious sales targets.
The core strategic challenge was to reach beyond the loyal banding community without alienating them — building bridges to new audiences while respecting the heritage and passion that makes the Championships so special to those who already know it. The solution was to show the world what brass banding actually looks like today: diverse, skilled, youthful and genuinely spectacular. Rather than asking new audiences to take that on trust, we put the people of the banding world front and centre and let them make the case themselves.
The Banding Together content series - a Humans of New York-style series of interviews with brass band musicians from across the community, deliberately showcasing younger faces, women and the full diversity of modern banding. The series generated strong organic engagement, with hundreds of likes, comments and shares, and provided a rich bank of content to fuel paid advertising — painting a picture of a world that experience-seeking new audiences could genuinely see themselves in.
Digital advertising via Meta delivered clear, measurable results — with a spike of 320 ticket sales during the two weeks the campaign was live and over 2,000 landing page visits driven by paid activity. Pixel tracking allowed Mobius to hone targeting throughout the campaign and build data pools for future use, ensuring each campaign builds on the last.
Community email outreach to people from relevant communities delivered high open rates, extending the campaign's reach into brass band networks across the UK.
Press targeted both national and regional media — recognising that the strength of regional bands competing was a powerful hook for local press. A campaign running from August through October secured 32 pieces of coverage across 11 London and national outlets and 21 regional titles. Highlights included BBC Radio 3, ITV London and front page splashes in the Yorkshire Post and Leicester Mercury — reaching a combined audience of 81.4 million.
Targeted print distribution put the Championships in front of experience-seeking audiences in relevant venues and spaces, extending physical visibility beyond the digital campaign.
New artwork was created to give the Championships a consistent, contemporary visual identity across all platforms — a signal to new audiences that this was an event worth their attention.
The event hit the sales target set by the Royal Albert Hall. Press coverage reached a combined audience of 81.4 million across 32 pieces, with an estimated 929,000 views — delivering 147% of the impressions KPI. The Banding Together series generated hundreds of organic engagements and provided content that worked hard across paid channels. Digital advertising drove a clear and demonstrable spike in ticket sales. And for the first time, the Championships had a campaign infrastructure — pixels, data pools and audience insights — to build on in future years.
"There has been a lot of positive feedback relating to the noticeable additional media exposure that the 'Nationals' and banding have received this year, so we thank you for your hard work in beginning this long journey of turning mainstream society's perception of banding around!"
This campaign was led by Anne Dillow, Head of Marketing at Mobius.
To discuss your project, get in touch at team@mobiusindustries.com.