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We know you're always looking for new ideas, products, and strategies. So let us help. Whether you're looking for creative ways to present silent auction items, food trucks that serve tacos until 2 a.m., or performers who can juggle fire and sing opera, we want to hear your questions—however random or specific they may be. Email queries to style editor Lisa Cericola at lcericola@bizbash.com. Some may be selected—and answered—for upcoming stories.
Sanrio's Hello Kitty pop-up Photo: Lester Cohen/Getty Images for Sanrio
Sanrio's cutesy Hello Kitty brand is celebrating its 35th anniversary. And for a pop-up sponsored by Target to honor the occasion, there was perhaps no better-suited venue choice in the land than Royal/T, a 10,000-square-foot art exhibition space, retail store, and Japanese-inspired café, itself bearing the same visual and thematic traits.
Free and open to the public, the pop-up Hello Kitty-related art exhibit and Sanrio retail shop, known as "Three Apples," runs from October 23 through November 15. Sanrio's team unpacked and installed the exhibit, and Japan L.A. shop owner Jamie Rivadeneira curated the Hello Kitty artwork, which is for sale. Royal/T supplied the catering and service staffing for a private, invitation-only grand opening party on October 22 to kick it all off.
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In a congested festival marketplace—and a tough year—the American Film Institute's 23-year-old A.F.I. Fest is offering free tickets to all festival screenings this week. A.F.I. and presenting sponsor Audi made the move this year to supply complimentary tickets to the screenings, including a limited number of seats at the evening shows and galas, including the festival's opening and closing nights.
The idea is known as "See a Film on Us," and as part of the plan, organizers reduced the number of feature films from about 100 to about 60, and short films by half to about 25; all seats are fully committed under the new plan, an attractive arrangement for sponsors.
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Budgeting for the coming year is well under way, and planners seem to have good thoughts about what they'll be working with in 2010. In last week's poll, 41 percent of participants said they're expecting bigger budgets than they received in 2009, while another 33 percent think their budgets will be about the same. Fewer than 1 in 5 readers expect tighter budgets, and just 7 percent still aren't sure.
This week we'd like to gauge your feelings on invitations and which kinds feel most appropriate these days. Have your say in this week's poll, which is in the left column of the home page.
Gen Art's 12th annual Fresh Faces in Fashion event Photo: Tiffany Rose
Thursday night marked Gen Art’s 12th annual Fresh Faces in Fashion Los Angeles show—and the first time the organization produced the event in the city since merging with Rock Media in September. Aside from its billing as the "official opening show" for the debut of the two-day program known as Rock Fashion Week L.A., Fresh Faces remained unchanged for the most part, even returning to the Petersen Automotive Museum for the third consecutive year, despite previous plans to take Rock Fashion Week L.A. to Paramount.
“We definitely expected a lot more corporate sponsors—that definitely had a big impact,” said Gen Art C.E.O. Ian Gerard, referring to the venue change and truncation of Rock Fashion Week L.A. from four days to two. “I think bringing the shows to the Petersen and combining sponsors made a lot of sense in terms of where things are economically in October. A four-day show was just not economically viable.”
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TV commercial star Kylie introduced Microsoft C.E.O. Steve Ballmer at the Windows 7 launch. Photo: Richard Koek
FROM NEW YORK Given Microsoft's enormous customer base—a January 2009 report put the technology giant's market share at 88 percent—when it launches a product, there's always a certain amount of buzz surrounding it. But rather than replicate the elaborate marketing stunt it produced for the debut of the Windows Vista operating system, Microsoft took a simpler approach to the press event introducing Windows 7. Inside Skylight Thursday, October 22, some 340 journalists, software testers, and executives from hardware manufacturing partners gathered for a six-hour launch that combined art gallery-style exhibits with live demonstrations and product vignettes.
"We wanted to create an event that represented the product and be mindful of the current state of the economy and the broad consumer mindset. So we set a tone that was simple, approachable, and authentic while demonstrating the excitement we all feel for Windows 7," said Windows group marketing manager Ed Chase, who led the planning of the project. To pull it off, Chase collaborated with Pinnacle Exhibits and a crew of other local and West Coast companies.
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Mustachioed participants at a 2008 Movember party Photo: Courtesy of the Movember Foundation
Movember, an Australian nonprofit that raises money and awareness for men's cancers via mass mustache growth each November, comes from fairly fortuitous beginnings. In its first year, founders just sprouted their whiskers for fun, before realizing the conversations started by ironic facial hair could have a positive effect.
"It just came to us over some beers on a Sunday night in Melbourne," said Movember co-founder Adam Garone. "The original idea was just to bring them back for a joke, and 30 of our friends participated for no particular reason that November. Every guy had a lot of fun, but all of us had gotten grief from bosses and girlfriends over the month."
That was 2003. Garone and his friends had enough fun with their month of mustaches to try it again the next year, but to placate their friends and colleagues, they decided to make it a fund-raising effort.
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In his life and death, Michael Jackson was a larger-than-life figure, surrounded by seemingly limitless pomp and glitter. Appropriately then, the premiere for the movie culled from his final rehearsal footage, Michael Jackson's This Is It, was an event that fit into the same category, and conjured its own mystique and energy in a bustling, fan-mobbed downtown Los Angeles Tuesday night. Columbia Tristar Marketing group senior vice president for special events Alison Bossert, along with executive director Mary Powell and manager Dori Golod, oversaw the event, with production by 15/40. "It was the premiere event of the season," Bossert said.
The spectacle began with arrivals on the Nokia Plaza at L.A. Live. The atypical setup felt more like a stage than a standard arrivals line: Instead of the usual carpet, a red laquer dance floor lay underfoot, inset with video and lighting elements to evoke Jackson's iconic "Billie Jean" video. Dancers from the planned tour, known as the "Crystal Divas," performed an aerialist routine overhead in Swarovski crystal costumes and chandeliers. Glass cases displayed costumes from the intended tour, some unfinished. Video elements and LED screens surrounded the area, and a fan pit in the middle emanated energy. Craig Waldman of 15/40 described the scope of the arrivals scene as "like an awards show." About 200 photographers and 120 television crews lapped up the coverage.
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Helen Devore Waukazoo on the podium with Maria Shriver at the Minerva Awards Photo: Gold/Wong
It might be said that 2009 is a year that created a particular need for inspiration and community support—especially in a state like California, where budget shortfalls and the unemployment rate have become notorious. Either in spite of or because of that climate, California's first lady, Maria Shriver, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Women's Conference once again drew masses of women from all over the state to join a packed roster of about 70 high-level speakers and participants at the Long Beach Convention Center.
This year, the program ballooned from a single day to two full days—to accommodate the increasing number of would-be attendees. (Each year, full-day passes to the conference sell out in record time. Tickets this year sold out in less than two hours, beating last year's record of three.) The first day's program, a Day of Transformation, served as somewhat more informal programming, with two 1,500-attendee sessions and six 400-person breakout sessions. "We were getting so much feedback from people who wanted to participate and have access," said executive producer Alexandra Gleysteen. "It's a way to get more hands-on information—how to get a new job, start a nonprofit—all in a spiritual context and a serene environment. It's on a different scale, more intimate, than the main program."
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Waterford Targets More Marketing Mileage With New Year's Ball: Since bringing its signature bling to the New Year's ball drop in New York in 1999, Waterford has been an active partner in the globally watched event. But now the Irish crystal company wants more recognition for that contribution. An upgraded six-ton ball—made of 2,268 Waterford crystals and backlit by 32,256 Philips LEDs—will debut this December after a $2.5 million print advertising campaign. Waterford also committed to an upgraded sponsorship deal, in hopes that some of the one billion people who catch the ball drop this year will also notice who made it. [BrandFreak]
Events Boost Essence Image: Not all magazines are downplaying events, and Essence is even earning praise for them. The title was chosen as one of Advertising Age's top 10 for the year, and the trade credits the Essence Music Festival for being such an appealing brand to marketers. The New Orleans concert series, held over Independence Day weekend, saw 428,000 attendees—up significantly from the already impressive 270,000 it hosted the year before. [AdAge]
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