UDC 2024

The Overview

Untitled Designers is one of Africa's most recognized design communities, dedicated to engaging, empowering, and educating designers across Sub-Saharan Africa. Their flagship event, the Untitled Designers Conference, brings together designers, creatives, and industry leaders for a day of learning and connection. In 2024, I was brought in to direct the marketing for UDC2024 and the goal was simple: make it the biggest one yet.

We did exactly that.

What I Was Working With

The conference already had a reputation and a community behind it. What it needed was a focused marketing push that could turn that goodwill into ticket sales, filled seats, and sold out merchandise. There was one extra layer of pressure though. The ticket price for this edition was significantly higher than previous ones, which meant the marketing had to work harder to justify the investment and bring both returning attendees and new faces through the door. I came in, assessed what we had, and got to work building a strategy around it.

What I Did

I designed and executed the full social media content strategy for the conference, building a content calendar that kept the audience informed, excited, and moving toward a purchase decision. Every post had a job to do and I made sure it did it.

On email, I built out the campaign strategy to reach and engage thousands of community members across every stage of the funnel using Nas.io. From early announcements to last chance reminders, the emails were intentional and timed to drive action.

Coordination was its own challenge. The volunteers assigned to support me were designers, which made sense given the nature of the event, but it meant I could not lean on them for the marketing heavy lifting. I was intentional about delegating tasks they could genuinely handle while taking on the more complex work myself. It stretched me but it also sharpened me.

The multi-channel approach, combining social, email, and a well structured content calendar, delivered. Ticket sales came in, seats filled up, and the merch sold out completely.

The Results

UDC2024 became the most successful edition of the Untitled Designers Conference to date. It recorded the highest ticket sales in the conference's history, drew over 3,000 attendees in person, reached an online audience of over 100,000, and sold out all merchandise. The testimonials from attendees speak for themselves. People traveled across Lagos and beyond just to be there and left saying it was the highlight of their year.

What I Took Away

Marketing for a community event is different from marketing a product. The audience already cares. Your job is to remind them why, make it easy for them to show up, and give new people a compelling enough reason to take a chance on something they have never tried before. When you get that balance right, the results take care of themselves.

This project also taught me a lot about teamwork and the art of context switching. Between managing volunteers, aligning with external communities, keeping sponsors happy, and executing campaigns simultaneously, I was constantly moving between different people, different expectations, and different priorities. Learning to shift gears quickly without losing focus on the bigger picture was one of the most valuable things I took away from this experience.

Proof of Work