From local revival to media stage for top brands.
Client
Marktrock
Category
Partnership Strategy – Brand Activation – Influencer Marketing
Challenge
When Lyn and Kat Kerkhofs decided to revive Marktrock in 2025, twenty years after their father Jokke’s passing, they faced a unique challenge: how to make the comeback relevant without a recent track record or existing channels. They asked Kill Your Darlings to design a partnership-driven campaign strategy that would secure strong brand support ahead of ticket sales, deliver meaningful on-site activations, and turn the revival into more than a nostalgic gesture into a media platform that brands wanted to be part of.


Solution
Kill Your Darlings designed and ran the partnership strategy around four pillars: visibility, experience, hospitality and media value. We built right-sized packages, handled outreach and deal structuring, and aligned each activation with the founders’ story.
A founder-led influencer layer amplified the build-up: Kat Kerkhofs’ audience and content became a distribution engine months before the event, supported by a two-part documentary that followed the project and aired on VTM 2 / VTM GO (DPG Media).
On the ground, partner activations made the story tangible. Examples include Sabam’s local talent push, an Albert Heijn city-tie-in ahead of a Leuven opening, OnePlus on-site content, Accent’s playful “job ladder”, and a nostalgia-driven Coca-Cola touchpoint with the Kerkhofs sisters. The festival’s partner roster included Stella Artois, Coca-Cola, Bacardi, Piper-Heidsieck, OnePlus, Albert Heijn, Stad Leuven, and Nationale Loterij.

Results
The revival attracted 45,000 visitors across Leuven’s city squares, making it the city’s biggest cultural weekends of the year.
The partnership-first approach paid off well before gates opened: with nine major partners secured ahead of ticket sales, brands were already part of the story months in advance.
Combined with a national media partnership and Kat Kerkhofs’ own following of more than 600,000, the festival generated an estimated two million media impressions through press coverage, social media and documentary content.
On site, activations from partners such as Coca-Cola, Sabam, Albert Heijn and OnePlus brought the strategy to life, creating experiences that resonated both with festival-goers and with wider audiences online.
Marktrock The Revival ultimately showed that a festival can operate as a media platform. By combining Kat Kerkhofs’ personal reach with a clear partnership model and creative activations, the story started months before the event and continued long after giving brands far more than just visibility on site.
Credits
Branding
:
Mutant
Production
:
Nostrezz & Sporthouse Group
Social management
:
Wingman agency
Website design
:
Webcube