1,269 leads from 1,702 sessions in one day for WELT and Planetarium Berlin at the Moon Festival
The WELT news channel and the Stiftung Planetarium Berlin activated the Moon Festival with an UpReach photo booth — in a single action day, 1,702 sessions and 1,269 qualified leads were generated (74.6 percent session-to-lead conversion). The mechanism: AI background removal with curated space scenes, a parallel GDPR-compliant data request with explicitly secured image rights, and a cloud CMS dashboard that gave WELT and Planetarium Berlin geo-insights into participant origin in real time.
More than 200 B2B brands from across Europe trust UpReach — from agencies to enterprise corporations.
The initial situation
The Moon Festival is a one-day event with high footfall and a mixed target group — families, astronomy enthusiasts, Berliners and tourists. For WELT and Planetarium Berlin, three goals were in play at once: a tangible activation on the event day, lead generation for future events, and insights into participant origin for strategic event planning.
The strategic additional requirement was securing the image rights. The shots taken were to be usable later — for follow-up events, presentations, event material. That demands a clear, GDPR-compliant image-rights capture in the moment of the touchpoint, not afterwards.
Operationally, the tight time window was added: 1 action day, high footfall, no second chance. The activation had to run stably from the first visitor on — no setup-time buffer, no scope for later correction.
The UpReach solution
UpReach supplied a photo booth with curated cosmic backgrounds — galaxies, moon surfaces, space scenes with a clear Moon Festival reference. Visitors chose a cosmic background in the touch interface, a countdown ran, the image was taken and integrated into the chosen space scene by AI background removal. The AI ran in real time, with no physical green-screen builds needed at the event touchpoint.
Output options were two-track: download to one's own device or a physical print to take away. Both options create immediate brand engagement with WELT and Planetarium Berlin and secure the image asset as a keepsake anchor.
The central conversion lever was the GDPR-compliant data request with a dual function. First: lead capture with a newsletter opt-in for follow-up event communication. Second: explicit image-rights capture for the future use of the shots by WELT and Planetarium Berlin in event material, presentations and follow-up events.
The second lever was the cloud CMS dashboard with geo-insights. WELT and the planetarium could evaluate in real time which regions the participants came from — a data layer that, for classic event evaluations, is normally only obtainable weeks after the event through surveys. More on the technology: /software.
Setup & Logistics
Lead time 4 weeks: 2 weeks for software configuration in the WELT Moon Festival CI (screens, cosmic brand worlds, touch flow), 1 week for the GDPR pipeline with a dual function (newsletter opt-in plus image-rights consent, cleanly separated in legal terms in the touch flow), 1 week for the geo-insights configuration in the cloud CMS and the final compliance sign-off including an image-rights capture review.
Build at the event location by an UpReach technician, with calibration to the lighting of the Moon Festival location and an end-to-end test of the entire pipeline. On-site support by UpReach staff across the 1 action day, with real-time performance visibility.
Data pipeline on the event day: every session generated a record with a timestamp, the newsletter opt-in status, the image-rights consent status and (where voluntarily provided) the postcode/region for the geo-insights analysis. WELT and the planetarium could track the live performance via the cloud CMS dashboard — sessions, conversion rate, daily trend and geo distribution.
Results by the numbers
sessions at the Moon Festival
qualified leads
action day
1,702 sessions in a single action day correspond to an event footfall of high activation density — the cosmic staging pulled consistently throughout the day, with no loss of draw at later points.
The 74.6 percent conversion from session to qualified lead is a remarkably high figure in the event context. The mechanical reason: anyone who wanted to take the image away as a keepsake (print or digital delivery) automatically passed through the opt-in step. The separation of newsletter consent and image-rights consent was clean in legal terms, yet in the flow it cost the visitor no friction.
The geo-insights data layer was the strategic added value for WELT and the planetarium. From the regional origin distribution of participants, conclusions could be drawn about catchment area, marketing impact per region and follow-up event targeting — data quality that would not have been accessible without a digital touchpoint.
Key takeaways from this setup
Image rights belong in the touch flow, not afterwards: the legally clean image-rights capture in the moment of engagement is far more efficient and legally sound than after-the-fact solutions. An explicit consent, separated from the newsletter opt-in, in the touch flow enables free re-use of the shots with no legal risk.
Geo-insights as a strategic bonus: when the touch flow includes an optional postcode/region request, a geo data set emerges that is valuable for follow-up event planning — catchment area, advertising-region impact, more targeted targeting. It is a near-free added value that extends the ROI of the activation.
74.6% conversion shows: experience beats an entry mechanic: anyone who receives an image of themselves in a galaxy staging is far more opt-in-ready than with a pure email-request mechanic with no return. The experience value is the real conversion lever — not the lead-funnel trick.
UpReach Components Used
Hardware
UpReach photo booth in a Moon Festival wrap, print hardware for instant prints
Software 01
AI background removal with curated cosmic scenes and galaxies
Software 02
White-label UI in the WELT Moon Festival CI, GDPR data gate with separate newsletter and image-rights opt-in, optional geo-insights step (postcode/region), cloud CMS dashboard with real-time geo distribution
A single-day event activation with an image-rights and geo-insights pipeline
UpReach builds event activations with legally clean image-rights capture and geo-insights for follow-up event planning — from the concept to the CRM and data handover.
