Forbidden Forest is a music festival which takes place at Belvoir Castle, deep in the English Midlands. As its name suggests, Forbidden Forest takes place in the woodland of the 15,000 acre Belvoir estate. It offers festival goers an assortment of experiences including five stages playing drum and bass, deep house and techno.
Forbidden Forest commissioned Corporation Pop in 2022 to reimagine the brand. We ultimately delivered a campaign which included 3D environments, motion graphics, a website and creative direction throughout the festival season.
Forbidden Forest 2023 campaign branding
Evolving the brand
Forbidden Forest festival positions itself as a spiritual and hedonistic adventure. The festival is brought to life with a mix of music and top quality production, punctuated with intimate, crafted experiences. They provide a fusion of music and nature with a feeling of escapism and intimacy the biggest festivals cannot offer. For 2024, the festival had won a major headline sponsor and was booking bigger names than ever before.
Organisers had a number of goals in mind. They wanted to re-address the audience balance and appeal to more women. This would move it away from a heavier male skew which had developed since they launched in 2016. They planned to extend the festival from a one-day event to a weekend experience, incorporating camping for the first time. And they saw an opportunity to develop more boutique options. This would attract a section of the audience that demanded a more bespoke, catered-for festival experience.
Customise-made 'FF-typeface'
Approach and concept
Corporation Pop wanted to surround the festival with a feeling of mystique and wonder. We imagined a place populated by mysterious symbols and technology from another time. This wasn’t just the future, it was also the past and a place without time. We wanted to infuse a sense of fascination and charm wrapped in secrecy and the unknown. A suggestion of something otherworldly deep in the forest.
We envisioned physical installations in the forest and started with the creation of a code. Inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics, we crafted a unique runelike typeface and motion graphics sequences. The Forbidden Forest marketing team then broadcast these as part of their social media campaign(s).
Environments and assets
We created a 3D digital forest environment in which we placed flickering, neon-edged coded assets and presented them as snapshots. These included a nighttime lake reflecting the glow of the symbols and the moon above, and a path at dusk leading the eye into the woods.
FF24 teaser promo asset
Customised-typeface rendered in scene
Success
Corporation Pop delivered an exciting campaign, an extensive collection of marketing assets, creative direction along with a brand new website designed and developed from the ground up.
As a result, Forbidden Forest 2024 sold out within 48 hours of the campaign launch, ahead of any artist announcements.
This was the most successful campaign in the festival’s history. It accumulated the biggest reach and largest number of impressions across Forbidden Forest’s social platforms.
The rapid sell out meant the festival could apply for bigger capacity. The second batch of tickets also sold out in super-quick time.
FF24 teaser promo asset