Digital Marketing Planning Using the RACE Model in a Volunteer-Run Cultural Event

Abstract

Cultural events organized by volunteer-run, nonprofit associations operate under structural constraints—minimal budgets, the absence of dedicated marketing personnel, and dependence on volunteer labor—that are not well accommodated by digital marketing planning frameworks developed for commercial contexts. This paper examines how the RACE framework performs when adapted to such a setting through a single-case study of Palco Aberto, the first edition of a new seasonal event for emerging performing artists organized by a volunteer association in Vila Nova de Famalicão, Portugal.

Data include documentary materials, platform-native digital analytics, and post-event surveys of participants and volunteers, analyzed through framework analysis using the four RACE phases as a priori categories. The campaign produced asymmetric outcomes across phases: Reach substantially exceeded the planned target, Act-phase engagement was strong, while Conversions underperformed. Discovery-channel data suggest that a substantial share of registrants reached the event through relational rather than paid pathways. On this basis, the paper advances — as a hypothesis warranting longitudinal and multi-case testing — a Recursive RACE configuration, in which the Engage phase may function generatively as an input to the subsequent Reach phase rather than solely as the terminal stage of the current cycle.