How 5th & Mad generated 1,122 ticket sales and 28,000 new website visitors through event-led PR
5th & Mad is a bi-level gastropub and entertainment venue in New York City.
The venue wanted to significantly increase brand awareness across New York, generate more media coverage and turn that attention into measurable website traffic, enquiries, footfall and sales.
We developed a five-month campaign built around event-led and experiential PR, creating reasons for journalists to cover 5th & Mad while simultaneously giving consumers a reason to visit.
The result was eight promoted events, more than 1,100 ticket sales, approximately $75,000 in recorded ticket and food-and-beverage revenue and around 28,000 new unique visitors to the venue's website.
The challenge
New York has one of the most competitive hospitality markets in the world.
Simply telling journalists that another Manhattan bar or restaurant is worth visiting is rarely enough to generate significant attention.
5th & Mad wanted something much bigger than occasional venue listings or restaurant mentions. The objective was to create an explosion of awareness around the venue and use PR to support tangible commercial activity.
The campaign needed to help generate:
— New York and wider media coverage
— Greater awareness of the 5th & Mad brand
— Increased website traffic
— More people visiting the venue
— Ticket revenue
— Additional food and beverage sales
— A stronger reputation for 5th & Mad as an entertainment destination
Our approach
Rather than relying on conventional restaurant PR, we built the campaign around newsworthy themed events and experiences.
Across five months, we helped develop and promote eight events designed to work on two levels.
First, each event needed to be commercially attractive enough that people would buy tickets and attend.
Second, it needed a strong enough concept to give journalists a genuine editorial reason to write about it.
The events drew on recognisable entertainment, cultural and seasonal themes, with concepts including themed brunches inspired by properties and cultural moments such as Harry Potter, Mean Girls, Spice Girls and Legally Blonde.
That meant we were not simply pitching:
“Come to this New York bar.”
We were pitching specific experiences that journalists could turn into entertainment, lifestyle and what's-on stories.
Generating major New York media coverage
The strategy generated coverage across New York, US and international media.
Publications covering 5th & Mad and its events included:
Eater, New York Post, Observer, Time Out New York, Bustle, Thrillist and Daily Mail, alongside additional entertainment, food and lifestyle media.
The breadth of coverage helped expose the venue to audiences who might otherwise never have encountered the 5th & Mad brand.
But media coverage was not treated as the end result.
The purpose was to turn attention into action.
Turning PR into ticket sales and footfall
Across the campaign, eight events were promoted.
Together, they generated:
1,122 ticket sales
That represented more than 1,100 people coming into the venue through the promoted events.
Ticket sales generated approximately:
$45,000
Once attendees were inside 5th & Mad, they also spent on food and drinks.
The events generated approximately a further:
$30,000 in food and beverage sales
That brought the combined recorded ticket and food-and-beverage revenue associated with the events to approximately:
$75,000
For 5th & Mad, the value of the campaign therefore extended well beyond media mentions.
PR helped create experiences that could attract coverage, sell tickets and bring paying customers directly into the venue.
28,000 new unique website visitors
The campaign also created a substantial increase in online discovery.
Across the five-month project, 5th & Mad recorded approximately:
28,000 new unique website visitors
People were discovering the events through media coverage, visiting the website to learn more and moving closer to becoming customers.
For a hospitality business, that connection between media attention, online discovery and physical footfall was an important part of the strategy.
Using reactive ideas to keep 5th & Mad in the news
Not every media opportunity required a large event.
We also looked for topical and playful ideas that could keep the venue relevant to journalists between major campaigns.
For 4/20, we developed a CBD-infused cocktail to mark 20 April.
The unusual, timely concept gave the media another reason to talk about 5th & Mad and secured a feature in Time Out New York.
It demonstrated an important part of the wider campaign approach: finding ideas that fitted the personality of the venue while also giving journalists something interesting enough to cover.
The results
Over five months, the campaign combined experiential PR, event promotion and reactive news hooks to produce both media and commercial outcomes.
| Result | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Campaign length | 5 months |
| Events promoted | 8 |
| Tickets sold | 1,122 |
| Ticket revenue | Approx. $45,000 |
| Food & beverage revenue | Approx. $30,000 |
| Combined recorded event revenue | Approx. $75,000 |
| New unique website visitors | Approx. 28,000 |
| Core strategy | Event-led and experiential PR |
| Media examples | Eater, New York Post, Observer, Time Out New York, Bustle, Thrillist, Daily Mail |
| Market | New York City |
| Campaign status | Completed |
Why the campaign worked
The campaign did not rely on telling journalists that 5th & Mad was a good venue.
Instead, we repeatedly created reasons for journalists to talk about it.
Themed events became stories in their own right. Those stories reached potential customers. Customers visited the website, bought tickets and came through the doors.
The model was straightforward:
Media coverage → website traffic → ticket sales → venue footfall → additional food and beverage sales
That is particularly valuable for hospitality and experience-led businesses, where PR can be connected to something audiences can actually attend, experience and purchase.
You can view 5th & Mad’s published articles in our Media Coverage database, alongside hundreds of other articles secured for our clients across a wide range of industries, sectors and areas of expertise.
Could PR help build visibility for your hospitality business?
Fair Public Relations works with hospitality, food and drink, consumer and experience-led businesses to develop stories journalists have a genuine reason to cover.
Campaigns can combine creative story development, event PR, launches, founder and expert positioning, consumer stories, reactive opportunities and proactive journalist outreach.
Earned media coverage and commercial outcomes cannot be guaranteed, but every campaign is developed around credible opportunities and ideas that make commercial sense for the business.
