Sydney Festival 

Helping Sydney Festival through a crisis 

The Sydney Festival is a city-wide celebration of culture and creativity, dedicated to commissioning new local works and supporting international artists to share their work in Australia. After accepting a problematic donation, the festival experienced wide-scale boycotts by consumers and withdrawals from leading acts. The festival announced an independent review, with a goal of avoiding this kind of situation in future and called on Ogilvy PR for crisis counsel and advice on how to proceed.  

We supported the leadership in crisis management, and the interpretation of the review, bringing focus back to their core purpose, along with how to transparently communicate the review findings. 

By being honest, transparent and initiating the development of a social ethical framework of operations, the festival’s leaders were positioned as believable and honest, re-establishing the festival’s social licence to operate.