| EVENT INTELLIGENCE 08.03.09 8:00 AM |
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Marketers Share Insights on Successful Event Partnerships
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 | HBO and Virgin Atlantic's Entourage Air
Photo: AP Photo/Virgin America, Bob Riha Jr |
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Playing well with others hasn’t been strictly enforced since kindergarten, but companies looking to maintain or increase the impact of their events could do well to pay heed to that notion. Brand partnerships for events, campaigns, or long-term initiatives can produce more desirable results than tackling a project solo in any economy, but these days—when people are asked to do more for less—pooling resources can help marketers get more for their buck.
But before you jump into bed with another brand, make sure to confirm you and your partner are looking for the same thing. Six months of trying phone conferences and constant concessions may not be worth a few dollars saved or a mention in Us Weekly. To get an idea how successful pairings come together, we talked to marketers who recently teamed up to share production responsibilities and generate more media impressions, higher attendance, or stronger buzz than each probably would have on their own. The bottom line: They’re all open to doing it again.
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HBO, Virgin Atlantic, Entourage, The Fader, Levi's, Belvedere Vodka, Bustle Clothing, Consumer Electronics Show, iLounge |
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| EVENT REPORT 04.20.09 3:33 PM |
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Marketers Consider Coachella Too Important to Skip in Lean Times
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 | T-Mobile's late-night hangar party
Photo: Polk Imaging/FilmMagic |
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Ask any marketer with a presence at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and he’ll tell you that the opportunity to promote in the desert during the festival weekend is unmissable and nonnegotiable—even in a downturn. Chalk it up to the sheer concentration of well-connected and enthusiastic music industry folks, fans, and friends captive in the middle of the desert, or to the extreme temperatures and terrain, or to the totally immersive quality of the whole thing—but the attendant brands felt they couldn't afford to be left out, even if this year's economic climate made sponsorship participation and overall budget dollars tougher to wrangle. The festival kicked off on Friday and wrapped Sunday night in Indio.
“This year was really difficult. Sponsors are putting each event under a microscope, and they want to make sure it’s the right type of event for the right R.O.I.,” said Andreas Herr, publisher of Anthem magazine, whose desert party has developed a reputation as the most authentically hedonistic and bacchanalian of the weekend. “But the reason it’s so important for us is that it’s all about contributing to the lifestyle that we cover inside of the magazine. So many people look forward to this event throughout the year. At a time like this, it’s really important to give our fans and our readers something to really look forward to. That one weekend when you can really escape reality and go out there and have fun. It’s our biggest event that we do throughout the year, and we have a lot of fun doing it.”
This year, Anthem’s signature event included a Saturday pool party at a sprawling five-acre ranch property with a three-acre lake. (Herr characterized it this way: “The rough theme is '70s porno ranch meets disco. Does that even make sense? It makes sense to me.”)
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Coachella, T-Mobile, Anthem Magazine, Levi's, Ray-Ban, Urb Magazine, Filter, Vitaminwater, Goodlife.com, Going Green |
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| EVENT REPORT 04.16.09 12:21 PM |
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Levi's Presents Free-to-Public Powersliding Championship With Two-Story Course
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 | The two-story course at the powersliding championship
Photo: BizBash |
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These days, the word free can be a pretty compelling tool to lure consumers. And that was the angle Levi's worked when it presented the third annual championship for powersliding—a spectacle of a freestyle sport performed on a course two stories high.
Overseeing the event was the Levi's PR team, headed up by PR director Erica Archambault, who tapped A Squared Group to produce, and San Francisco-based Dispatch to handle PR. A Squared designed and executed the set up of the the massive course, complete with cringe-inducing rails and slides adjacent to the Santa Monica Pier, on a cool and windy Wednesday afternoon. Levi's outfitted the extreme athletes in its jeans, an appropriate buffer against the inevitable friction the competitors endured. (Think of a high-altitude slide down a banister.)
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Levi's, Moutain Dew, Matt and Kim |
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| EVENT REPORT 03.23.09 3:46 PM |
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Levi's and The Fader Team Up for Massive South by Southwest Performance Series
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FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS There was no finer example of South by Southwest’s knack for remaining seemingly recession-proof this year than the Levi’s/Fader Fort. A cross between a heavily sponsored Woodstock and a post-apocalyptic hipster commune, the joint venture between the denim maker and the magazine earned some of the festival’s biggest buzz, due to its elaborate setup and poorly guarded secret cameo by Kanye West.
Organized by The Fader marketing division Cornerstone Promotion—and produced by Lacy Maxwell Productions—the fort took over an entire field, sandwiched between a warehouse and defunct railroad tracks. Sheets of old metal and plywood haphazardly erected around the perimeter kept details of the playground secret from the long lines waiting for free admission, letting only the sound of artists like Little Boots, Peter Bjorn & John, and Jadakiss slip through the cracks.
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Levi's, The Fader, Ray-Ban, South by Southwest |
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| EVENT REPORT 11.11.08 10:21 AM |
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Paper Magazine Launches Award Show at Los Angeles Project
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 | Paper Magazine's pop-up shop
Photo: Josh Madson |
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The pioneers may have headed west in search of gold, but New York-based Paper magazine journeyed here last week in search of something of equal value to an arts- and style-driven publication: a teeming pool of artists and underground talent, and an untapped market of potential readers. For the fourth consecutive year, the magazine made its east-to-west migration, setting up camp in the city to host its Los Angeles Project from November 5 through 9.
“Celebrating the people of Los Angeles is really at the root of the project,” said Drew Elliott, the mag's New York-based vice president of creative services and marketing. “We see amazing artists coming out of L.A., and we want to celebrate and cover them while raising our visibility in the market, which is a big one for us. We’re creating a Paper posse.”
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Paper Magazine, Levi's, Converse, Rodarte, Opening Ceremony, Pop-Ups |
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| FRESH FACE 07.23.08 11:00 AM |
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New York-Based Production Studio's West Coast Counterpart
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Bicoastal Businesses: Jeremy Smith, an independent contractor with experience helping galleries and artists produce large-scale or technically challenging installations, may not have pictured himself working on events, but an opportunity came along that he couldn’t pass up. Peter Brown and Jeffrey Hatfield, founders of New York-based design and production firm Brooklyn Guild, wanted to open an office in Los Angeles and had their sights set on Angeleno resident Smith, who met Hatfield in Los Angeles through a mutual colleague. “We needed somebody we could trust with our clients and who could, if need be, hang from a crane and weld,” Hatfield says. Smith was intrigued by the company’s full-service approach to production: “Jeffrey really sold me with the design aspect,” Smith says. “[The position] gives me the chance to fabricate pieces and work with clients directly instead of only working in a studio, where it’s someone saying, ‘This is what I want; now make it.’ Instead, we’re getting a little more interaction with the client—you give them ideas and they give you ideas, so you’re really working together on the whole project.” In November 2007, the trio opened Los Angeles Guild, with Smith permanently based in the West Coast office and Brown and Hatfield managing both branches.
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M.A.C. Cosmetics, Dior, South by Southwest, Levi's, Stella McCartney |
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| NEWS 05.07.08 7:53 PM |
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Anthem Emails Memory Book From Coachella Pool Party
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 | Anthem's Coachella pool party
Photo: BizBash |
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If your event generates as much hipster chatter as does Anthem magazine's Coachella pool party, why let it die, when you could rehash it ad infinitum instead? In a sure-to-be-forwarded e-newsletter yesterday, more than a week after the two-day event wrapped, the magazine sent out what it called a "memory book," a collection of photographs taken by partygoers professional and amateur. The magazine also assembled and distributed a short video from seven hours of footage taken at the weekend-long event, which includes shots of Levi's gift suite, DJs spinning in a booth above the pool, and a cannonball diving contest that included one naked guest among the swimsuit-clad ones. —Alesandra Dubin
RELATED TOPICS
Levi's, Anthem Magazine, Coachella |
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| EVENT REPORT 04.28.08 4:02 PM |
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New Slate of Coachella Party Hosts Increases Nighttime Offerings
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 | Anthem magazine's Coachella pool party
Photo: BizBash |
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FROM INDIO, CALIF. Since the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which wrapped yesterday after a three-day run at the Empire Polo Field in Indio, dependably reinvents itself every year, it's perhaps not a surprise that the brands that host piggybacking parties in the desert also change and evolve.
DKNY Jeans, which set up a multiday pool party at a luxury home last year, sat out this year's go round, as did Hugo Boss. "It's just hard to find the right house very close to the fields," said Hugo Boss Fashions' New York-based vice president of marketing and PR, Katja Douedari, who oversaw Boss's event series in 2007. "Loved the Mod Resort last year, but it's a long drive. And if you can't do it right, then better not do it all." (Nevertheless, Douedari made the trip out to the desert for some non-work-related fun.)
So what brands did have the strongest presence in 2008?
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Coachella, GQ, Anthem Magazine, Gap, Etnies, T-Mobile, Sidekick, Condé Nast, Heineken, Newcastle, Belvedere Vodka, The Fader, Boost Mobile, Le Sportsac, Levi's, Wet n Wild, Adidas, Jeremy Scott |
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| NEWS 03.27.08 7:39 PM |
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Art to Imitate Retail at Fred Segal's Damien Hirst/Levi's Spring Pop-Up
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 | Hirst's jeans for Levi's
Photo: Adrian Nyman |
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Fred Segal Man in Santa Monica will get an art-world infusion thanks to a spring pop-up store, dubbed "Damien Hirst X Warhol Factory X Levi's." The pop-up will be installed for two months, and will launch with an April 3 book party for a tome by the same name (also the name of the collection) that documents the creation of the collection between collaborators Hirst and Levi's, and provides some historical context for fashion and art. Two unseen Hirst pieces will debut at the party, where the uncomfortably named DJ Pubes will spin. Designer Adrian Nyman worked with Fred Segal to develop the retail environment, and Evolutionary Media Group is producing and handling PR. The Hirst/Levi collection first appeared at New York's spring Fashion Week. —Alesandra Dubin
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Levi's, Pop-Ups, Fred Segal, Damien Hirst |
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| NEWS 11.02.07 3:25 PM |
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Hipster Haven Paper Event Series Returns to L.A.
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New York-based Paper magazine will bring its cool-kid magnet event series back to town next week, beginning Wednesday. The magazine and staff will host an array of events around town—formerly known as Paper Project L.A., now known as "Paper magazine's Los Angeles project"—while producing the February 2008 edition of the magazine (out of an art gallery space on La Brea in Hollywood) from reporting on its own series.
The five-day slate includes an art exhibition sponsored by M.A.C. Cosmetics in Hollywood, a dance party hosted by Paris boutique Colette with Jeremy Scott and Paper at the Montmartre Lounge (dress code: "bad-ass Michael Jackson monster looks"), a guitar shred-off battle and musical performance by Ima Robot presented by Levi’s at the Roxy, a Malibu beach party at short board surfer Pascal Stansfield's home, a book-signing party for Cheryl Dunn’s new book, Some Kind of Vocation, and an open-call setup on La Brea for fashion and looks to be included in the mag's issue.
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Paper Magazine, Pop-Ups, M.A.C. Cosmetics, Levi's |
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