BLOCKv and Grammy nominated DJ Sasha meet up at ADE and drop vAtoms BLOCKv Follow Oct 26, 2018 · 3 min read

Last week over 400,000 electronic dance music industry members and fans converged on Amsterdam for the annual ADE expo (https://www.amsterdam-dance-event.nl). The expo featured over a thousand different events, conference presentations and panel interviews with leading DJs and promoters, along with numerous live gigs and parties around the the city of Amsterdam.

Grammy-award nominated DJ Sasha, Dutch festival promoters Free Your Mind and Grolsch Brewery teamed together with BLOCKv to provide fans and ticket holders a glimpse of the future of ticketing.

Four days before DJ Sasha’s “Last Night On Earth” gig, Free Your Mind sent all ticket purchasers a package of digital objects including “vAtom” versions of their tickets which seamlessly linked into the promoter’s ticketing platform. Included in the package was sponsored promotional content from Grolsch beer brand Kornuit and a competition entry for Sasha merchandise. Although this was only promoted via a single email, ticket-holder engagement rates with the sponsor content were tracked at over 33%. The winners of the Kornuit promotion were able to redeem their vAtoms for a glass of the “real thing” behind the Sound Fleet bar using BLOCKv’s seamless new redemption method, requiring no technology behind the bar.

“We’re used to getting 5–7% click rates from mass emails, getting a three times increase in meaningful fan engagement with sponsor content is unheard of!” says Free Your Mind marketeer Noah van Putten .

Two days prior to Last Night On Earth gig, Sasha & Free Your Mind announced they dropped mystery vAtoms containing prizes in Dam Square located at the heart of Amsterdam. A total of 50 individual vAtom scratch cards were dropped, some containing a rare Ethereum-backed digital collectable of a previously unreleased mix by DJ Sasha, others contained the last 5 pairs of available tickets for the Last Night On Earth gig. All the vAtoms were collected by fans within 30 minutes of the drop.

“I was there at the Square watching people grabbing vAtoms from their phones” said Noah. “I could see the vAtoms disappearing off the map in real time. It was really surreal!”

Free Your Mind are looking at this small but successful campaign as a proof of concept for something much bigger in 2019.

“The BLOCKv platform lets our sponsors and our artists engage in new and meaningful ways with fans - before, during and after a gig in ways that were previously impossible” says Free Your Mind owner Stef Vrolijk. “We’re partnering with BLOCKv to augment ticketing and festival-goer experience for our major dance events in 2019, including the Free Your Mind festival in June which last year saw over 15,000 attendees. Fans are going to love this.”