Project: promoting an annual event
Client: Explorathon
When you’re trying to unite a festival with multiple partners and different working styles, you need a strong, clear brand that stands out. But how do you create a cohesive identity for an event as diverse as Explorathon, Scotland’s festival of research?
In our latest case study, we reveal how Hoolet provided the “binding agent” for Explorathon, building a consistent brand and a communications strategy that helps make research relatable and fun.
Meet the client
Explorathon is Scotland’s festival of research – a celebration of how discovery and innovation shape everyday life.
From rocket-building to decoding the secret language of whales, the festival offers workshops, webinars and live events designed to inspire young people (ages 6–17), their parents and teachers.
Delivered by a consortium of Scottish universities, Explorathon’s events demonstrate how research stretches across science, arts and culture – and most of all, that research is made by real people, not just academics hidden away in labs.
By 2022, the festival needed a unifying story. With different institutions bringing their own working styles and ideas, Explorathon was in danger of becoming fragmented. This is when Hoolet stepped in, providing the “binding agent” to deliver a consistent brand and impactful communications strategy.
How we helped: brand refresh and marketing strategy
Our partnership with Explorathon began in 2022. And our first task was to give the brand a refresh.
We created a shiny new logo and a vibrant colour palette, rolling out consistent brand assets across all platforms.
This wasn’t just a design exercise for our talented graphic designers, it was about creating a recognisable brand that would make the festival pop both online and in person.
Our core work has always been to raise awareness of Explorathon’s events across Scotland. But it has also evolved.
We’ve run full-scale communications campaigns, handling everything from social media and web articles to paid advertising campaigns.
In 2024, our team brought in some extra muscle. Rory designed templates for physical assets like pop-up banners, while Kathryn Ward added her digital marketing sparkle to the mix. We even started to explore channels like TikTok and Bluesky more deeply to reach new audiences.
In 2025, we welcomed Simon Knox and the amazing animated short video – who doesn’t want to see an astronaut pogo-ing across the country and a skateboarding dinosaur propelling itself across the screen? – was of course all delivered out in the beautiful blue brand.
And every year, we produce a detailed report at the end of the festival.
As well as measuring success against targets, highlighting key insights from the statistics and performance, it contains learning points and recommendations.
These vary from when and where to direct resources, to ideas for effective new content and suggestions for how to work together more efficiently.
The results: a digital marketing success
Our flexible and strategic approach has helped to future-proof the Explorathon brand. The results speak for themselves.
Website traffic
Our campaigns generated over 6,500 link clicks in 2024, a massive jump from the 1,618 clicks in 2023. This fourfold increase in a single year shows our messaging is cutting through the noise and getting people to the website.
Social media growth
We have seen some fantastic numbers:
- On Facebook, followers grew by 53% between 2023 and 2025 and interactions nearly doubled in 2024 from the previous year
- Instagram followers jumped by 28% in two years, with engagement shooting up by a whopping 128%. Best of all, link clicks increased by a remarkable 3,650%
- Paid campaign success: our paid social ads were a huge hit, reaching almost 100,000 unique users for just £0.03 per click
The outcome? A cohesive, engaging brand that has created real buzz.
We’ve seen huge turn-outs at events, which is proof that with a little strategic communications, you really can make research feel real.
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