| EVENT REPORT 10.28.09 3:50 PM |
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This Is It Premiere Sprawls Over L.A. Live With Aerialists, LEDs, and Fans Galore
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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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This Is It, Michael Jackson, Sony, Columbia Pictures, L.A. Live, Ultimat Vodka |
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| EVENT REPORT 10.14.09 5:04 PM |
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Movie Pictures: A Look at Meatballs, Zombieland, Law Abiding Citizen, and Whip It Premieres
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 | Food props on the red carpet of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Photo: Line 8 Photography |
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In some parts of the world, fall brings crisp weather and colorful leaves that crunch under foot. In Los Angeles, it brought a hyper-busy event calendar filled with parties that included movie premieres packed with ideas—like an army of zombies, oversize donuts that hung overhead, and decor that begged to be admired but definitely not touched. Here is a selection of photos from the arrivals scenes and bashes for Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Zombieland, Whip It, and Law Abiding Citizen.
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Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Zombieland, Whip It, Law Abiding Citizen, Sony, Fox Searchlight, Overture Films, Columbia Pictures, Derby Dolls |
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| Q & A 07.16.09 9:00 AM |
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Microsoft's Rosalind Murphy Targets New Clients With Female-Focused Events
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 | | Rosalind Murphy |
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FROM NEW YORK
As executive engagement manager at Microsoft’s New York office, Rosalind Murphy is something of a social liaison between her account managers and the Fortune 500 clientele they serve. She produces activities and meetings to develop brand relationships, with guest lists often limited to C.I.O.s and other I.T. executives—not surprising in the tech sector. But Microsoft desires to deepen its business ties, and part of Murphy’s job is to increase her company’s contacts within its client base.
Used to working with male-dominated technology departments, Murphy expanded her brand’s network with a series of quarterly events just for women. In the two years since she introduced the Women’s Executive Forum, she has already established it as a popular event series, buoyed diversity at other Microsoft functions, and increased contacts within clients such as Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Sony.
What sparked Microsoft’s push to seek out more female clients?
We just wanted to reach out to women. The staff at Microsoft is about 75 percent male, and one of the things we found in our accounts was that when you get to the customer base, the chief information officers are also typically men. We wanted to develop other executives, so we made this a push to find people beyond the normal I.T. roles in different areas like marketing and finance. We wanted to seek out the developing female executives, women who might be in director or vice president roles now but are up-and-coming in our client base.
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Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Sony |
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| EVENT INTELLIGENCE 06.02.09 9:00 AM |
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Guerrilla Marketing Guide: Where to Stage Stunts in Six Cities
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 | Tennis pros Venus Williams and Andy Murray stopping traffic in Miami
Photo: Getty Images |
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Chicago
Where to Go: One of the Windy City’s most iconic locales, the Daley Center, allows marketers to reach consumers—including the lunching masses—under the watchful eye of a 50-foot untitled Picasso sculpture. A few blocks northeast, and just outside the Loop, is Pioneer Court. The petite, extremely busy plaza sits where the Chicago River meets Michigan Avenue and sees most of the 40 million tourists who visit Chicago annually.
What It Takes: The Daley Center’s plaza is owned by MB Real Estate (312.603.7981), which prices permits individually. Pioneer Court is controlled by the Equitable Life Insurance Company and the Chicago Tribune Company, but any event using the streets around it would require permits from the City of Chicago (Office of Special Events, 312.744.0626). Months of red tape and a 28-page application packet might persuade you to go guerrilla instead.
Recent Stunt: When More put future first lady Michelle Obama on its October 2008 cover, the magazine deployed 100 readers to the streets around Pioneer Court to pose with issues—and it didn’t spend a penny on permits.
Who Can Help: Based in Chicago, Legacy Marketing Partners has earned a lot of attention from experiential campaigns like the Stoli Hotel and the mobile Burger King/NFL Challenge.
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Guerrilla Marketing, More Magazine, Sony, DirecTV, Budweiser, Ikea, Ikea, Sony Ericsson |
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| EVENT REPORT 07.01.08 6:55 PM |
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Flaming Cars Light Up Hancock Premiere
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Guests at last night’s Hancock premiere didn’t have to wait for the film’s screening at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to witness the path of collateral damage its title character, an oft-drunk and reluctant superhero, leaves in the wake of begrudgingly saving the day. Instead, they got a sneak-peek on the arrivals carpet, where twelve Hancock logo-branded cars, arranged to look like a series of wrecks and pile-ups, served as a playful extension of a traditional step and repeat. Columbia’s Alison Bossert tapped 15/40's Craig Waldman to produce the car carnage, which was broadcast to Hollywood pedestrians on giant Jumbotrons, and—in a tie-in for the Sony-owned Columbia—on Sony Bravia televisions.
The damage-heavy theme continued at the premiere’s after-party across the street in three parking lots located behind the El Capitan. Small flames shot out of cars that sat in the center of two bars, where servers wore beanies identical to the one worn by Hancock in the film. Other references to the movie included caged lounges—a nod to Hancock’s brief stint in prison during the film—and a strung-up 30-foot inflatable whale similar to the one the superhero saves by hurling it into the ocean.
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Sony, Columbia TriStar, Hancock |
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| TOP 100 EVENTS 02.29.08 7:29 PM |
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Southern California's Top Entertainment Industry Events 2008
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 | The Environmental Media Awards
Photo: Alex Berliner/Berliner Studios/BEImages |
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1. Academy Awards
The most ballyhooed shindig of the entertainment year, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences’ Oscars take place at the Kodak Theatre. Vanity Fair generally has a lock on the most coveted after-party, but the magazine canceled its 2008 event in the wake of the Writers Guild strike, leaving Elton John's AIDS fund-raiser as this year's most high-profile Oscar bash. Sequoia Productions is the longtime producer of the academy’s official Governors Ball. The 80th annual show was held on February 24.
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Southern California's Top 100 Events, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, DirecTV, People Magazine, ET, Recording Academy, Warner Brothers, Sony, Film Independent, Screen Actors Guild, American Film Institute, Environmental Media Association, Toyota, Goldenvoice, Women in Film, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, American Cinematheque, The Los Angeles Times, Glaad, N.A.A.C.P., Starz, BET |
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| EVENT REPORT 02.01.08 5:15 PM |
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Audi, Hyde Offer Refuge From Super Bowl Storm
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 | The 2008 Audi R8 is the focal point of the event layout.
Photo: BizBash |
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FROM SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. After a 20-year absence from the Super Bowl commercial mania, Audi returns this Sunday with a 60-second spot in the first quarter. To add to the marketing push, the brand took over a nine-acre estate in Paradise Valley's upscale hills, offering celebrities and V.I.P.s a place to lounge Wednesday through Saturday. Dubbed the Audi Forum, the program also mixes lots of mini-parties and cosponsors.
"When deciding how we could leverage our television ad, it came up that the Super Bowl certainly attracts our target audience," said Audi business and East Coast communication director Andrew Lipman. The forum concept is not a new one, as Audi has 10 permanent locations worldwide. "Basically, they are brand-experience centers, not traditional showrooms," Lipman said. "The design is sleek, sophisticated, and on par with what we consider Audi to be."
The venue, a traditional Arizona home (complete with terra-cotta shingles and creamy stone walls), went through a massive redesign and build-out. "The objective was to create an Audi-esque space out of a Southwestern home," said Tony Berger of Relevent in New York, who produced the event.
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Super Bowl, Audi, Marquis Jet, Sony |
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| EVENT REPORT 11.07.07 4:33 PM |
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Guitar Hero Takes Over Best Buy Rooftop With Burning Man-Style Launch
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 | Guitar Hero's rooftop spectacle.
Photo: Paul Davies/NCompass |
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For fervent fans of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, only one experience could beat playing the latest version of Activision's monster-hit music video game: living it. And for several hours before Best Buy put the game on sale at midnight on October 28, the mega video-game retailer virtually made their dreams come true with a huge launch party on the roof of its West Los Angeles store.
“The concept was for people to feel like they actually walked into the game,” said event producer Donna Graves, co-founder of NCompass International Inc., who worked closely with Yvonne Groves, Best Buy's event marketing senior manager. “Everything we did was to be as authentic as possible.”
NCompass brought in frequent collaborator Keith Greco of Greco Decor to create a nighttime landscape filled with scenes and life-size characters from the game, as well as their real-world inspirations. As 1,500 music, film, and video-game folk, media members, and cool kids ascended stairs to the roof, they found a large stage outlined in neon and emblazoned with a Burning Man-like neon figure, resembling the main stage of the game's Desert Rock Tour scene. There, Joel Madden of Good Charlotte played two 45-minute sets that flanked a nearly hourlong performance by Poison. (Poison is a band in the game, and lead singer Bret Michaels is a character.)
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Guitar Hero III, Xbox, PlayStation, Best Buy, Warner Brothers, Walt Disney Company, Sony, Paramount |
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| EVENT REPORT 09.27.07 7:20 PM |
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Us Hot Hollywood Party Flaunts New Hollywood Venue
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 | The scene at Us Weekly's Hot Hollywood party.
Photo: Line 8 Photography |
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Us Weekly's M.O. is to pick the newest, most cooed-over spot in town for its Hot Hollywood party. (Last year it was at Republic.) This year, the mag stuck to the proven formula, taking last night's party to the new side-by-side clubs Opera and Crimson in Hollywood.
Wenner Media senior event marketing manager Gina Schramm worked with Cara Kleinhaut and her team at Caravents to play up the joint venues' dramatic, multi-textural touches. "The venue is so beautiful that we didn't want to do too much to take away from that," Schramm said. Kleinhaut added, "We tried to play up the [venue's] lush decor and to incorporate into our details the [existing] textures, like python-skin tiling and faux fur."
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Us Weekly, Sony, 100% Colombian |
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| EVENT REPORT 07.18.07 4:02 PM |
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E3 Scales Back at New Venues
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 | E3 attendees tested video games at the software showcase at Barker Hangar.
Photo: Courtesy of E3 Media and Business Summit |
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The Entertainment Software Agency’s newly downsized E3 Media and Business Summit—formerly known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo—debuted in Santa Monica last week from July 11 to 13 with a series of radical changes to the 12-year-old gaming convention. The ESA contracted show management to IDG World Expo C.E.O. Mary Dolaher, who acted as show producer and helped the agency reach its goal of creating a more intimate and businesslike environment.
Organizers scaled back the now invitation-only event from 70,000 to 3,000 attendees—consisting of select media, retailers, and financial analysts—and from 400 to 38 exhibitors. The need for a smaller space prompted the show's move from its previous home, the Los Angeles Convention Center, to the Barker Hangar and a series of Santa Monica hotels including the Viceroy and Fairmont Miramar. Buses shuttled attendees from hotel to hotel for press conferences and appointment-based in-suite meetings with game company executives, as well as to the software showcase at the hangar, where they could test video games. For their own press conferences, gaming giants Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo elected to tap into other venues, such as the Santa Monica High School amphitheater, which hosted Microsoft’s briefing.
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E3, Xbox, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo |
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