| Q & A 05.28.09 2:33 PM |
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Brent Bolthouse on Big Budgets, Smaller Parties, and Keeping Young Hollywood Entertained
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 | Brent Bolthouse
Photo: Randall Slavin |
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FROM LOS ANGELES
Brent Bolthouse has been an established name on the Los Angeles nightlife scene for years, with his own production company and its roster of corporate clients including Dior, Target, Maxim, Prada, and HBO. After a series of partnerships brokered in the past year, he now runs events as the head of full-service production company Bolthouse Vox Events, the product of relationships with some of the leading names in the L.A. event industry. Bolthouse merged his firm with Vox Entertainment and SBE, and the new company has an exclusive catering contract with Wolfgang Puck. Bolthouse took some time to speak with us about the strategies behind the alliances.
Bolthouse will also speak at the BizBash Expo June 11 at the L.A. Mart in Los Angeles. Information about the show is here.
Why did you decide to join forces with Vox Entertainment, SBE, and Wolfgang Puck?
Last year we started exploring possibilities to expand our event business and talked with Vox. They were always a nuts-and-bolts production house, and we were always on the entertainment side. We had a core warehouse of furniture, and they had [elements like] lights and barricades. Just looking at the economic climate, we decided it’s smart for us to pool our resources and create a joint venture to really strengthen our position in the marketplace. Our companies complemented each other.
Wolfgang Puck is the best caterer in the country. This year, in the spring, we all thought how great it would be to have a partnership with them as well. We wanted to take all of our resources and give that value to our customers.
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SLS Hotels, Brent Bolthouse, T-Mobile, Dom Perignon |
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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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FROM LOS ANGELES
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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RELATED TOPICS
Coachella, T-Mobile, Anthem Magazine, Levi's, Ray-Ban, Urb Magazine, Filter, Vitaminwater, Goodlife.com, Going Green |
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| EVENT REPORT 02.17.09 4:48 PM |
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T-Mobile Stages Celebrity Shootout During NBA All-Star Weekend in Phoenix
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 | Katy Perry performing at the T-Mobile Celebrity Shootout
Photo: Chris Polk/Film Magic |
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While a handful of marketers flew to Phoenix over the weekend to host events around the NBA All-Star Game—among them ESPN, House of Jordan, 944 Magazine, EA Sports, and Sprite—many brands followed the precedent set at the the Super Bowl this year and opted out, or ran with scaled-back (read: cheaper) versions of what they're typically known for. New to the scene, however, was T-Mobile's Celebrity Shootout, a charitable game of horse between Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade and celebrities like actress Eliza Dushku and Scrubs star Donald Faison.
Held Friday night in and around the Hotel Valley Ho's pool deck, the event was a multipurpose party that T-Mobile used to both promote its new G1 phone and launch its myFave's Shot of a Lifetime, a national sweepstakes that offers the winner and their "fave five" the chance to play horse with Wade at the Eastern Conference NBA Finals and to win $50,000. (For non-basketball fans: Horse is a game where two players take turns at trick shots; the player unable to duplicate a shot gets a letter in the word horse until one player spells the whole word and loses.)
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N.B.A., T-Mobile |
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| NEWS 02.12.09 1:16 PM |
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In The News: T-Mobile Gets Free Guerrilla Marketing, Vanity Fair Stages Oscar Return
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Here's a quick look at some of the bigger stories grabbing our attention this week:
T-Mobile Inspires Public Disco: A recent British commercial for cellular provider T-Mobile that featured 400 actors dancing in London's Liverpool Street station inspired more than 13,000 fans of the ad to do the same thing. They planned the event, dubbed Liverpool Street Station Silent Dance, on Facebook for last Friday and stormed the station at 7 p.m. Police had to close that station for more than 90 minutes, but there were few arrests for what a police spokesperson called "a peaceful and fun event." Organizers are already discussing another outing. [Telegraph]
Vanity Fair Returns to Oscars: One year away from the Academy Awards was enough for Vanity Fair. The magazine will return to Los Angeles for a week of pre-Oscar events and its hot-ticket post-awards party this month. Among the events on tap are an opening party for the BMW Art Car installation and a silent auction sponsored by Christian Dior. As for the big party, it’s moving to the much smaller Sunset Tower hotel, making invites that much harder to come by. [WWD]
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T-Mobile, Vanity Fair, Oscars, Academy Awards, BMW, Christian Dior, Desirée Rogers, Fashion Week, Halston, Live Nation, Ticketmaster |
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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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RELATED TOPICS
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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