In 2025, the Los Angeles Philharmonic became the first major orchestra to perform its own set at Coachella - not as backup, but as a headlining act. As a nonprofit reinvesting all revenue into programming, education, and musicians, we had no budget for paid promotion. Every view, follow, and share would have to be earned.
Our objectives:
- Capture the attention of Millennials and Gen Z as we look to recruit the next generation of LA Phil audiences
- Drive follower growth on TikTok and Instagram
- Amplify reach beyond Coachella to audiences unable to attend
The challenges:
- Every impression had to be organic.
- No guaranteed artist amplification: Guest collaborations were contracted for the stage only. Social shares were not guaranteed. Artists had to want to share our content with their millions of followers.
- A generational gap: Our average ticket buyer is 53. Coachella's audience averages in their 20s. We had to compel an audience 30 years younger than our core to choose a symphony orchestra over other acts.
- A lean, embedded team: Two social media managers and one senior marketing lead - no crew, no agency support - only our partnership with Coachella in capturing, editing, and publishing on-site from our phones in real time.
The plan of action:
Turn artists into voluntary distribution partners: Our Music and Artistic Director, Gustavo Dudamel, is one of the few classical musicians with verifiable pop culture status. "Gustavo's Mixtape" became a core component of the strategy. His genre-bending programming has been a signature throughout his 17-year tenure with our orchestra. For Coachella, this meant designing a set combining rock stars of the past: Wagner, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Stravinsky, and Bach with those of today via collaborators including LL Cool J, Cynthia Erivo, Laufey, Maren Morris, Natasha Bedingfield, Becky G, Ca7riel y Paco, Dave Grohl, and Zedd. Without a budget to buy guaranteed reach, we invested in music programming that would generate its own. We bet that the unexpected pairings would give audiences a reason to record and share, and press a story worth writing about.
Distinct platform strategies: All tailored to how each audience actually uses social.
The execution:
- 54 pieces of content: The team of three was responsible for all of it across both weekends - moving between crowd, backstage, and side stage, negotiating Coachella and artist approvals in real time, and keeping content published at the speed of the festival.
- TikTok as the insider: Backstage for rehearsals, on the tour bus arriving to the festival grounds, in the crowd asking festivalgoers if they'd ever heard of the LA Phil, capturing real-time reactions after performances, rounding up audience comments, and meme-ing UGC posts and B-roll. Having launched only 6 months prior, our TikTok account is purely personality-driven to introduce ourselves and connect with the next generation of LA Phil audiences.
- Instagram as an earned influencer engine: Polished performance reels and recap carousels showcasing the raw energy of the historic musical collaborations. All published to be co-owned by the artists through Instagram's collab feature.
On $0 digital paid media:
- 54 pieces of content
- 19,267,411 views
- 1,004,913 engagements
Earned organic reach far beyond Coachella:
- 75% of Instagram posts became voluntary artist collaborations - extending our content to their 30+ million audiences despite no contractual obligation
- 88,552 shares, carrying our content into new communities
- 10.5 million unique accounts reached with zero paid spend
- 2,000+ press placements generating 5× typical impressions, with coverage from ABC News, Vogue, LA Times, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Reuters, and KCRW
Captured Millennial and Gen Z attention:
- 67% of TikTok viewers were our 18-35 target, and on Instagram, over 56% were under 35 - a dramatic shift from our average ticket buyer age of 53
- 80,000+ hashtag usage of #LAPhil and #LAPhilharmonic
Drove follower growth across platforms:
- Over 14,000 new followers in one month
- Instagram surged at 9x its typical pace, gaining 8,276 followers
- TikTok skyrocketed at 12x its baseline, adding 5,932 followers
Behind every metric was a single creative conviction: that orchestral programming built for sharing could generate its own momentum. Coachella proved it - and kept proving it. The growth didn't stop when the festival ended. Instagram posted its strongest annual follower growth in four years, up 1.3x over the prior year. TikTok's trajectory was even more dramatic - entering 2025 at 6,000 followers, surging to 17,000 during Coachella, and closing the year at 31,000. That's 5x growth in one year. The festival wasn't a moment. It was a turning point.
