Panda Fest is one of the nation's largest outdoor Asian food festivals, bringing together food, art and cultural experiences that showcase the diversity of cultural traditions from Asia. After successful festivals in cities across the country including Philadelphia, San Diego and Chicago, Panda Fest selected Houston as one of its newest locations. From May 8 to May 10, 2026, Houstonians were invited to experience the city-wide debut of Panda Fest at The Waterworks in Buffalo Bayou Park. This vibrant, three-day event was designed as a full cultural immersion experience to showcase the diversity of Asian cultural traditions through art, trending street food and engaging experiences during Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month.

CHALLENGE

As this was the inaugural Panda Fest in Houston, it was critical to build widespread awareness to drive registration and reach an ambitious attendance goal of 35,000 ticket sales. The Like Minds Communications team was challenged with creating a robust media relations campaign that could successfully introduce this new festival to the market. This challenge was further compounded by the reality that public relations efforts oftentimes cannot directly correlate with ticket sales due to a variety of external factors. Therefore, the team needed to ensure their targeted media outreach effectively captured the attention of Houstonians across multiple platforms to maximize event awareness and attendance.

STRATEGY

Like Minds quickly developed and executed a comprehensive media relations strategy targeting local publications, television stations and community calendars. The campaign officially kicked off with a press release on March 5, 2026 to announce the festival's arrival. To secure diverse coverage leading up to the event, Like Minds utilized a variety of strategic pitch angles, including tying the event to AAPI Heritage Month, spotlighting participating local AAPI women-owned businesses, highlighting the trending Asian street-food and sharing the personal story of founder BiuBiu Xu.

RESULTS

The strategic media outreach was a resounding success. Like Minds secured 139 media placements with a massive estimated audience of 499 million and 9.64 million estimated views. The total value of the coverage secured was well over $65,000, with a local publicity value of $47,300 for television segments alone.

A major highlight of the campaign was securing coverage on all five English-speaking local television networks in Houston—KHOU 11, KPRC 2, FOX 26, ABC13 and CW39. This level of cross-network television saturation is considered rare for a single-weekend festival. Placements included highly coveted spots on local morning lifestyle shows such as KHOU 11’s “Great Day Houston” and CW39’s “H-Town Live,” as well as Houston Public Media’s “Houston Matters”.

Furthermore, KHOU 11, KPRC 2 and FOX 26 all attended the festival on-site to share coverage across their social platforms (including TikTok, Instagram, and X), which was a significant victory given the limited weekend staffing at local television stations.

Print and digital media were equally robust, with Like Minds securing an unusual and remarkable 11 pieces of coverage across Houston Chronicle channels.

Through proactive pitching, Like Minds successfully drove strong editorial interest and laid a solid foundation for Panda Fest to hopefully return to Houston as an annual tradition.