New York City’s premier music festival, Governors Ball, returned for yet another year.  From May 31 – June 2, the annual three-day festival was held on Randall’s Island and featured some of the music industry’s top-recording artists, as well as new and emerging musicians.  

Rivaling the performances on stage this year was the high-caliber Food & Beverage program, which included some of the most in-demand NYC food vendors as well as one-time-only collaborations.  These hit mashups included Doughnuttery x The Nugget Spot and The Melt Shop x King David Tacos.  

Prior to 2019, Gov Ball had not spent time focusing PR efforts on the  food and cultural elements of the festival (music only). AMP3 was specifically brought on board  to promote the food program in the lead-up to the festival, and manage an influencer campaign specifically targeted around the food program for the first time ever.  AMP3 sought out relevant food & culture media and food & culture influencers for both pre-festival media coverage, pre-festival social media coverage, and onsite coverage.

AMP3’s approach to promoting and elevating the Gov Ball Food & Beverage Program was multi-faceted.  Tackling everything from food lineup announcements, to hosting an exclusive media & influencer food preview event, to courting press and influencers leading up to the festival and onsite, AMP3 worked to generate buzz around the food & drink vendors, their stories, and the one-off collaborations.  Not only did AMP3 run the food PR, we also created and managed a comprehensive Influencer program that included signed posting agreements in exchange for tickets to the festival and other perks. 

Kicking off at the end of March, AMP3 helped Gov Ball host a 2 hour “Eats To Watch” Happy Hour Preview event at their Chelsea offices for select festival goers, food media, and food influencers.  Guests were able to try some of the most exciting 2019 collaborations and new vendor dishes, all while sipping on specialty cocktails prepared by the festival beer & liquor sponsors.  

To continue building the hype, AMP3 promoted three new initiatives in May including the inaugural Gov Ball brunch program, the launch of a Gov Ball Bodega, and an exciting kickoff to World Pride Month – all of which were new to the festival in 2019. 

The brunch program featured a handful of festival vendors putting brunch inspired twists on their signature dishes from breakfast inspired pizzas and tacos, to coffee cocktails.  The Gov Ball Bodega, modeled after the quintessential NYC corner bodega, sold festival essentials including water, sunscreen, snacks, and of course classic NYC bagels and cream cheese.  

In addition, the bodega served as the homebase for the festival’s onsite recycling program, where patrons turned in bags of recyclable cans or bottles from the festival grounds, and redeemed them for festival swag, including a reusable Gov Ball branded water bottle.  This was the fest’s first entry into sustainability, a story we helped to share with the media. 

This year, Day Two of the festival happened to fall on the first day of World Pride month (June 1).  To kick off the celebration, attendees were invited to participate in a PRIDE parade lead by NYC drag queens to the South Liquor Garden for a series of afternoon drag brunch performances. Additionally, Gov Ball partnered with  Bud Light to celebrate PRIDE onsite with a small Bud Light performance stage featuring all LGBTQ artists, and their recently debuted rainbow aluminum bottle benefitting GLAAD.