| EVENT REPORT 10.30.09 12:42 PM |
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Microsoft Introduces Windows 7 With Cute Kid, Product Vignettes
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 | TV commercial star Kylie introduced Microsoft C.E.O. Steve Ballmer at the Windows 7 launch.
Photo: Richard Koek |
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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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Microsoft, Windows, Dell, Samsung |
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| EVENT REPORT 09.08.08 11:14 AM |
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VMA Hospitality Suites Pick Venues With L.A. Character
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Back in Los Angeles after a long absence to tour other cities, MTV's Video Music Awards rolled into town this past weekend with all of the related events in tow, including those ubiquitous swag and hospitality suites. And this time, the suites took over some distinctive L.A. properties that seemed to call attention to the particular character of this year's VMA host city.
Hype Marketing's House of Hype took over a massive home above Hollywood, a property so big and far from its neighbors that it dominates an entire hillside. The setup at the house featured a photo booth and T-shirt screenprinting by Hit & Run by day, with live performances by Young Jeezy and Robin Thicke into the wee hours throughout the weekend. Guests reached the property—which features a grotto pool, a sand volleyball court, and expansive downtown-to-ocean views—by way of shuttle from a parking garage on the Sunset Strip below. Video directors Chris Robinson, Jessy Terrero, and Anthony Mandler nominally cohosted the House of Hype programming in honor of their award nominations.
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MTV, MTV Video Music Awards, Gift Suites, Verizon Wireless, Samsung, Eboost, Red Bull, Ciroc, Apple Bottoms, Urban Decay |
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| NEWS 08.13.08 2:40 PM |
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Beijing Photo Journal: Samsung's High-Tech, Eco-Focused Pavilion
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 | The Samsung Pavilion at the Olympic Green
Photo: Eric Powell for BizBash |
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BizBash contributing photographer Eric Powell is in Beijing for the Olympics this month, keeping us posted on the different parties and marketing iniatives in and around China's capital. Yesterday he stopped by Samsung's OR@S Pavilion in the Olympic Green. Built in the shape of a seedling, the pavilion incorporates green elements like artificial grass made from recycled car tires and sun pipes providing solar power to cell phone charging stations. The pavilion is open daily to athletes, their families, and spectators looking to check out Samsung products or just relax.
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2008 Beijing Olympics, Samsung, Beijing Photo Journal |
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| EVENT REPORT 02.02.08 3:17 PM |
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Maxim Flaunts Girls, Girls, Girls (and Sponsors)
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 | Hundreds of Maxim-ready girls attended the event.
Photo: Alexandra Wyman and Theo Wargo/WireImage |
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FROM SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. When presupposing what a Maxim party will entail, it’s a good guess that a girl or two will be on-site. And last night's Super Bowl weekend bash at Rande Gerber's new Stone Rose lounge in the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess fulfilled that expectation. The lad mag packed the 2,500-person guest list with the usual celebrity suspects (reality stars, rappers, and athletes), as well as hundreds and hundreds of pretty young things. Donning teensy weensy dresses and gobs of makeup, the girls could be seen running from one outdoor heater to the next to escape the evening’s 40-degree temperature.
In and around Stone Rose, the party’s massive footprint was mostly outdoors, spilling into the hotel’s main plaza and pool area. Produced by Maxim senior director of events Jordan Rothstein, TK New York’s Tracy Kessler, and Houston-based Eli Marketing’s Fontaine Swope, the event eschewed a theme this year in favor of an upscale look. “Last year was Hotel de Maxim, which was very much a hotel theme,” said Rothstein, adding that this year's party doubled as Stone Rose’s grand opening. “This year we decided not to theme the event, to just go with a very high-end, beautiful environment that reflects our brands and our partners.”
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Super Bowl, Maxim, Patron, Under Armour, Samsung, Perry Ellis |
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| EVENT REPORT 09.10.07 4:46 PM |
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MTV VMA Parties Embrace Vegas Style
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 | Held at the Pearl Concert Theater in the Palms Hotel and Casino, the VMAs were more intimate this year, and shorter, coming in at a little over two hours.
Photo: Getty Images |
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FROM LAS VEGAS In hopes of revitalizing a franchise that has seen considerable drops in ratings and reputation in the past few years, MTV took its Video Music Awards to Las Vegas on Sunday for the first time since the awards’ 1984 inception.
With its own reputation as a glittering, all-night, no-holds-barred city, Las Vegas proved to be an appropriate milieu for the 72-plus-hour barrage of bashes related to the main event. And flush with new nightclubs, the city—which embraces its reputation for wild antics as much as the show does—provided plenty of party-ready locations.
During the show itself, MTV found that along with the celebrities, publicists, and marketers that followed its move to the desert came a series of gaffes. Although Britney Spears’s amateurish opening performance certainly got people talking, it was widely considered a bomb. Later, technical glitches and mic failures abounded.
Producers reinvented the show’s format, flipping between the ceremony in the new Pearl Concert Theater in the Palms hotel and live video snippets from a series of satellite concert-house party hybrids filmed throughout the property. (With the broadcast’s coverage of so much of the Palms’s space, viewers could hardly be blamed for thinking they were watching a two-hour commercial for the hotel.) One highlight of the proceedings was Chris Brown’s performance, which had the singer and his backup dancers leaping among the glowing circular platforms on the main floor of the Pearl.
Going on around the show was a weekend-long party lineup managed largely by New York- and Los Angeles-based planners and vendors—perhaps not surprisingly, given that many of the events’ hosts were magazines and brands based in those cities. The majority of event organizers relied on Las Vegas’s wealth of over-the-top, highly publicized new venues to impress guests, rather than use heavy production to make a big impact.
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MTV, MTV Video Music Awards, Rolling Stone, Maxim, GQ, Xbox, Samsung |
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| EVENT REPORT 04.23.07 12:00 AM |
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Samsung Adds Hip-Hop Beats to Country Club Party
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 | | WireImage |
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Samsung Telecommunications America and Sprint celebrated the launch of the UpStage phone by inviting 500 Hollywood types to an all-day bash on April 15 at a private Beverly Hills manse. To woo hip, young potential customers who would, in a perfect universe, use the phone to tell their friends about it, Samsung senior marketing manager Cinco Calfee presided over a hip-hop-flavored country club environment that morphed into a tented nightclub showcasing live performances by Twista and Gnarls Barkley.
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Samsung |
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