DL KBF 2025 social monitoring / listening

Goals for social listening over this event:

  1. Make sure that if anyone is having a bad time in VIP, they don’t think we are there and aren’t blaming us for the drastically different service
  1. See if Lady Fingers still had the VIP tent contract since someone was approached about packaged goods.
  1. See if Terra just gave the contract to her sister.
  1. Assess whether or not the bar theming & other requirements that we were told we could not scale back on was applied to the bartending company that got the gig. Were they pouring more than 1 oz cocktails. Did they have changes in themes each day that were part of why VIP ticket holders were coming back.

Monitoring time frame: Sept 4 - 8, 2025

Active monitoring during these dates was required in order to catch Instagram Stories that only last 24 hours. Started Thursday evening and watched through Monday in case anyone did photos post-event once they got home and had a chance to sort.

Note that this project was all a bit overkill but I was working through workflows and standard processes with this as a test to see what was useful and what needed more research.

Listening Methods:

1) StatusBrew • social inbox for notification if Distilled Living was tagged.

This was set up before this event.

2) StatusBrew • added listening sets for:
  1. Instagram: #kbf2025 #kybourbonfest #kybourbonfestival #kentuckybourbonfestival #kbf
  1. Instagram: #distilledliving
  1. Twitter / X: #kbf2025 #kybourbonfest #kybourbonfestival #kentuckybourbonfestival
  1. Youtube: #kbf2025 #kybourbonfest #kybourbonfestival #kentuckybourbonfestival

3) Quick Launch set of links to key accounts:

Used Toby Tabs for quick launching all of these links several times a day and sometimes added a few that had shown up some other way. Alt quick launchers: Workona, Raindrop.io, OneTab:

Hashtags / Searches:
Key Accounts:

KY Bourbon Festival accounts:

Lady Fingers has been the KBF VIP caterer:

Eastern Light had their setup in the VIP tent (and Oxmoor Bourbon bottles being sold there)

Neeley had a vendor booth paid for at the event and was handling a portion of the Oxmoor Bourbon aspect of Eastern Light:

Ed Escott has a podcast and usually ends up in the VIP tent - his wife usually volunteers with the festival

Steve Coomes was booked to do educational sessions for KBF

Angel’s Envy was supposed to be the featured distillery for the VIP tent:

Joseph & Joseph sponsors the VIP tent and has been unhappy with how little focus has been on them the last few years:

Bourbon with Heart has a display in VIP each year:

KY Straight Ice sponsored with ice freezers:

City of Bardstown:

Jamie Burcham Estes Does the PR for KBF & Oxmoor:

Tracy Green (works for Estes PR)

Tom Wilmes usually goes to this event:

Almost always posts and wasn’t supposed to be in VIP this year (so just checking on what they’ve done)

Maggie Kimberl covers bourbon events:

Terra Nelson does event planning for KBF:

Identified as ticket holders:
4) Random checks

Randomly checked on Tiktok and other platforms. Most of what I saw on TikTok was a duplicate of what was on Instagram with regard to the festival.

Goal 1:

Make sure that if anyone is having a bad time in VIP, they don’t think we are there and aren’t blaming us for the drastically different service.

Did not see any complaints.

Goal 2:

See if Lady Fingers still had the VIP tent contract since someone was approached about packaged goods.

They appeared to still have the contract.

Ladyfingers Catering on Instagram
14 likes, 0 comments - ladyfingers_cateringlouisville on September 4, 2025
https://www.instagram.com/p/DOMn8s3kTgo/
Goal 3:

See if Terra just gave the contract to her sister.

The contract was given to her sister & Terra has promoting her sister’s company repeatedly on her biz & personal accounts

Goal 4:

Assess whether or not the bar theming & other requirements that we were told we could not scale back on was applied to the company that got the gig.

  1. Did they have any custom cocktails? No. Ultimate cocktail bar had
    1. Vieux Carré (similar to a Manhattan) https://www.liquor.com/recipes/vieux-carre/
    1. Angel’s Envy’s Peach Smash
  1. Were they pouring more than 1 oz cocktails? Looks like they poured cocktails the size of beers in the case of the peach smash. This does not mean they were irresponsible, it just means that the requirement we were told didn’t actually apply. Also spotted a number of other cocktails that were larger (screen shots taken.)
  1. Did they have changes in themes each day? No. Looks like they wore polo shirts each day and the welcome bar had the bartenders in visors for “Day Cap” theme. They branded lemon peels which Distilled Living did a previous year (and those may have been provided by Angel’s Envy) and they bought a small putting green instead of doing anything unique.

    Olivia Taylor - Community Partnerships Manager KY at @angelsenvy was given credit by Angel’s Envy account for the VIP Welcome bar in a story
    https://www.instagram.com/oguelda/
    I honestly think that Angel’s Envy did a lot of the work.

There are more screen shots and videos are available of all of this.

Overall Festival feedback ….

The people posting pics seem ok with things.

Some people getting bottles they wanted etc.

The camaraderie of seeing people they haven’t seen all year.

The AC and early access is what some people are purchasing with VIP.

However there’s some seriously bad feedback comments off of the last Facebook post. I’ve got screen shots of the comments here if they take them down: https://www.facebook.com/kybourbonfest/posts/pfbid0JpD4iGMTEWSzZSbhx5GbeDZvGnVuzHBZ3qAZnHFY8inGHs8CsENjffTNtvKH6z18l

Complaints about line management. Access to rare bottles. Complaints about people with Media passes getting access to rare bottles over the $7000 VIP tickets. People with GA tickets complaining about VIP passes getting access to anything good.

And on Instagram there’s a serious looking complaint that people with general admission bands used the VIP line to get in early one day which made the line longer and that it negated the point of paying extra for early access. (also have a screen shot of this)