Driving record referrals at Leicestershire Innovation Festival 2026

1284 Communications is LIF’s long-standing strategic communications partner. Having central marketing planning is essential in a multi-agency festival partnering with stakeholders from a range of disparate sectors.

As well as leading the design of the overarching Innovative Leicestershire brand identity, each year 1284 develops a festival‑wide narrative and detailed comms timeline, based on outcomes and learnings from previous years. 

This gives BGGH a clear plan to work with 1284 content in order to promote the programme through owned and partner channels while driving every call‑to‑action into its own Evolutive portal.

Operationally, 1284 Communications provides:

• A brand pack and assets for consistent use by partners
• B2B social media posts and visual assets
• Measurement of referral clicks to partner platforms 
• Management of press releases and media relations
• Blog posts and first-person columns
• A detailed post-festival marketing impact report
• Facilitation of panels and fireside chats with guests
• Speech, script and slide deck writing for key events
• Organisation of photography, video and other live content
• Chairing of multi-agency comms groups.

LIF26 delivered 11 events (target 10, up from 8 in 2025), achieving 648 registrations and 488 attendees against targets of 500 registrations and 410 attendees.