MAD//Fest

Building a digital platform for the UK’s biggest, boldest + most distinctive marketing/advertising festival.

Back in 2018, Anything was instrumental in getting MAD//Fest off the ground by developing its first website for the debut event, which drew 2,000 attendees.

Fast forward to 2024, and MAD//Fest has evolved into a major, dynamic festival of marketing, advertising, and disruptive creativity, now attracting over 14,000 attendees and some of the brightest minds in the industry. MAD//Fest had ambitious plans to expand its portfolio of events and needed a new digital platform to support its continued growth.

Challenge

The current website was built using Prismic with a PHP framework. While it functioned well, they still relied on Anything to manage tasks like updating navigation, adding new sections, and launching new events. What they really needed was a platform that would give them full control.

  • MAD//Fest had evolved into more than just a single event. With the launch of the Female Leaders Club, MAD//Masters, and a North-focused event in the works, they needed a platform capable of effortlessly supporting multiple events, with the flexibility to accommodate even more in the future.

  • While Prismic was excellent for managing content like Insights and News, it wasn't as effective for handling sections and adding entire new events.

  • The PHP framework was beginning to show its age, particularly in terms of meeting Core Web Vitals standards.

  • MAD//Fest found themselves juggling the same content across multiple platforms, including a mobile app that was specifically used during the event.

  • As the sheer scale of the events expanded, managing speakers, attendees, and everything else demanded significant manpower. What MAD//Fest needed was a platform that could also support the development of a portal, enabling people to update their own information independently.

Solution

Anything meticulously planned, designed and implemented a new digital platform that could seamlessly manage all market websites from a single CMS solution.

A future-proof digital experience:

  • The solution was centered around the Headless CMS, Storyblok. We chose Storyblok for its best in class content management capabilities, enabling the MAD//Fest team to easily manage every aspect of the website, from navigation to adding completely new event properties.

  • Dedicated servers are a thing of the past, thanks to our use of a Netlify Serverless solution. This approach automatically distributes the website's code across the globe, eliminating the need for a single, centralized location. As a result, the website delivers lightning-fast performance no matter where you access it from, while also ensuring maximum resilience with no single point of failure.

  • The website is powered by the performance focused framework Astro. Unlike JavaScript heavy frameworks like React or Next.js, Astro takes a unique approach by only serving JavaScript when needed. This ensures minimal page weight and industry-leading Core Web Vitals performance.

  • The new technology stack paves the way for the development of a self-service portal. This portal will not only offer a more responsive and improved service for speakers and sponsors but also lead to significant cost savings by reducing the need for manpower.

Sustainability

In addition to delivering a robust, scalable solution to meet MAD//fest ambitious growth targets, we were committed to building a website with sustainability at its core. To align with this ethos, we transitioned from always-on dedicated servers to a serverless approach, significantly reducing the website's carbon footprint.

Good

Core Web Vitals

100%

Lighthouse SEO Score

97%

Lighthouse Accessibility Score

  • Storyblok has been a gamechanger for us in terms of how we manage content for multiple websites. Our new sites look fantastic and the CMS gives us the flexibility we need as a b2b media business dealing with large volumes of content. We're excited to explore future design possibilities with our agency, Anything, and I'd recommend Storyblok to any business.

Dan Brain

Co-founder of MAD//Fest

Is Storyblok the right CMS for you?
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Read our Storyblok guide