Jozi My Jozi is passionate about Johannesburg. This non-profit wants the City of Gold to realise its potential as a dynamic, flourishing and creative urban centre.
That’s why it initiated Main Street Sundays. By transforming a stretch of road in Marshalltown into a car-free zone on designated Sundays, Jozi My Jozi wanted to help Joburg get its groove back.
Flow Communications offered to cover the inaugural event on 12 April 2026 pro bono. Through purely organic social media content, we reached 800 000-plus people, generated one million impressions, boosted follower numbers and captured the gees – playing a part in revitalising Joburg.
The overall communications objective was to help build hype and buzz around the first Main Street Sundays event, through organic posting and amplification on social media.
There was no budget for paid boosting, so all content had to be fresh, authentic and visually driven to maximise engagement. We envisaged that the campaign’s reach would be further bolstered by user-generated content as attendees joined the conversation and hopped on the hashtags.
We set the following SMART goals for this campaign:
- Reach 500 000 people through organic social media content on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X and TikTok
- Generate 500 000 post impressions across all social media platforms
- Attract 1 000 new followers across all social media platforms
Because we were targeting a broad swathe of Jozi fans – spanning race, class, culture, and age, and people from suburbs, townships and the inner city – we opted to use all of Jozi My Jozi’s social media platforms to broaden our reach and play around with content formats.
We had to make a compelling case for Joburgers to leave the comfort of their homes on a Sunday. So our pre-event messaging focused on the free nature of the event, the “FOMO” factor and a positive call to action to encourage residents to come out and play.
Sunday 12 April dawned bright and a team of three Flowstars, accompanied by urban “photo walkers” from the Young Urbanists South Africa group, immersed themselves in Jozi’s first car-free Sunday event in the heart of the inner city.
What a buzz! There was no shortage of photo opportunities as Joburg’s finest came out to experience arts and crafts, live music, open-air book readings, wellness activities, graffiti and live sketching, while grabbing something to eat and drink.
The inaugural #MainStreetSundays was a resounding success, both in terms of event attendance and in how the online conversations reinforced a groundswell of positive sentiment about the inner city.
The live coverage on the Jozi My Jozi social media pages played a vital role in the campaign’s virality. Social media analytics showed #MainStreetSundays and #JoziMyJozi as the two main trending hashtags on the day, thanks to the 112 feed posts and 542 stories we shared on Jozi My Jozi’s pages.
Results (as of 21 April 2026):
- Reach: 800 000 people (target: 500 000 – exceeded by 60%)
- Post impressions: one million (target: 500 000 – exceeded by 100%)
- New followers: 6 900 (goal: 1 000 – exceeded by 590%)
Our posts attracted more than 4 000 link clicks, 1 000 comments and 48 000 engagements, with an 8% average engagement rate.
What really made the campaign stand out was how much people shared their own experiences. User-generated content, especially stories and short-form videos, made the event’s online presence feel alive – not curated.
Main Street Sundays succeeded in creating a powerful shared urban experience that brought people together both physically and digitally. The event helped set Jozi My Jozi up as a credible, cool organisation, and laid the foundation for many more such events in our public spaces.
