Evian is a longtime sponsor of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, which takes place this year on Saturday and Sunday. Leading up to the festival, the brand has partnered with Live Young to launch a social media campaign with chef Richard Blais, using Instagram for its #evianeats photo activation. The chef has already started sharing daily culinary photos via @evianwater to promote the hashtag; once the festival kicks off, he'll post daily pictures via #evianeats.
In January, HBO hosted a New Years-themed party to celebrate the second season of its hit show Girls. Held at the Skirball Center of Performing Arts in New York, the cheeky function invited guests to pen resolutions on placards with the Twitter hashtag for the show #Resolutionsgirlsbreak. (The show's creator, Lena Dunham, wrote: "I resolve to wake up within two hours of my alarm.") Guests snapped photos holding their placards, and the fun shots were posted to HBO's Instagram page.
Earlier this month, Grey Goose hosted a launch party for its new Cherry Noir flavor at Thompson Hotel in Toronto. At the event, guests could use Instaprint, a location-based photo booth for Instagram designed with a specific hashtag, to print out keepsake photos. Some 365 images were printed out on site, but using the hashtag #cherrynoir, guests created more than 131,000 social media impressions that night.
In November, Tiffany & Company hosted an in-store party in New York to celebrate the launch of its Tumblr page. At the event, live feeds from the brand's Instagram and Twitter feeds were projected onto the walls via Postano. Launched in 2011, Postano is a social media visualization tool that's designed to help brands leverage social and digital marketing content to build branded communities. Through Postano, brands can aggregate multiple social media feeds and then style the content to match the brand's presentation standards. The platform then lays the result out in a completely customizable format and automatically syndicates it across Web sites, Facebook tabs and apps, and more. It is also one of the only tools that aggregates social content for brands across all of their owned channels, including Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and more. A live Postano feed allows clients to easily pull in content whether by selected accounts or hashtags, monitor the content, and then have it instantaneously displayed.
At the annual BET Pre pre-award dinner at Milk Studios on July 7, Andre Wells's production and design included vibrant watercolors, peacocks, and an overall ethereal look and feel. At the cocktail reception, Wells's team used tones of red, butter, fuschia, purple, teal, green, navy, and midnight blue to create a vivid look. Club sofas, ottomans, and circle chairs from Revelry were all done in the vibrant tones. A live Twitter wall showed guests interacting on social media.
Wise Guys Events offers “Clockwise,” a cell phone scavenger hunt played with QR codes. Teams of as many as 10 players race against the clock to discover and decode 12 QR codes hidden within the game zone, usually a few city blocks. The codes may be located on a bike parked on a city street or on matchbooks players receive after giving a password to a bartender. When players scan the QR code, they get a password worth points at the end of the game and also instructions on how to complete an optional challenge for bonus points. Each hunt takes about four hours.
Google recently announced the launch of Chromebox for Meetings, a videoconferencing service that provides “speed, simplicity, and security.” Hardware includes the Intel-based Chromebox unit, a high-definition camera, a combined microphone and speaker unit, and a remote control. As many as 15 participants can join the video meeting from other conference rooms or their laptops, tablets, or smartphones. One click of the remote starts the meeting without the need for access codes. The system operates similar to Google Hangouts and is integrated with Google Apps, so invitations can be sent directly through Google Calendar. Chromebox is currently available from Asus, but both HP and Dell will offer it in the near future.
On Location Engagements is a location-based content delivery system for events. The company provides small beacons that use low-energy Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to communicate with attendees’ smartphones, both iOS and Android. Planners upload their floor plans into an online system and designate where they will place the beacons. Then they assign content such as maps, product information, videos, surveys, and sponsor materials to each beacon. Attendees either download the system's app, or it can be embedded into the event’s existing app. When attendees are within a designated range of the beacon—which can be anywhere from 5 to 30 feet—the content automatically appears on their devices. After the event, planners receive analytics such interactions per beacon, length of stay at each beacon, and traffic patterns at the venue.
Catchbox is a wireless microphone to pass—or even throw—among speakers or audience members. The device consists of a microphone capsule secured with a magnet inside a soft, seven-inch cube that comes in blue, orange, green, or magenta. Catchbox communicates with an included receiver that can be connected to any sound system. To avoid unwanted noises, internal sensors turn the audio off when the cube is in motion. The company says the product is intended for smaller groups of as many as 100, and it provides the best-quality audio when no obstacles block the line of sight between the Catchbox and the receiver, which should be within 100 feet. As many as four of the units can be used at one time in a room. Catchbox is accepting preorders, with shipping scheduled for June.
Tangible Interaction will unveil its new LCD graffiti product at South by Southwest in March. In contrast to the company’s existing rear-projection digital graffiti wall, the new system takes up much less space and can be used outside in daylight. Planners provide the LCD screen, which can reach 70 inches, and Tangible Interaction provides the sensing system and two digital graffiti spray cans. The look of the graffiti wall is customizable with logos and backgrounds, and clients select colors, nozzle widths, stencils, and other features. After guests create their artwork, they can share the images on Facebook and Twitter or via email.
Using 3-D technology, Oreo set up a vending machine at South by Southwest that customized Oreo cookies, including the color and patterns of the cream, based on Twitter trends and consumers’ preferences. There was also a milk bar with a variety of flavors.
Delta Air Lines launched its new in-flight Innovation Class program at the TED Conference in Vancouver in March. Innovation Class is a partnership with LinkedIn to give up-and-coming business people the opportunity to sit next to leaders in their industries on select flights. MKG, Delta’s experiential marketing agency, brought the concept of connectivity to life with a digital experience called Social Soul. The Social Soul exhibit surrounded participants with images and sounds from their Twitter stream and from those of a suggested match.
For the new event held at the Carnegie Library, Event Farm created disco balls embedded with tablets that lowered into the crowd during the live band's performance, allowing guests to use their badges to download a track from the group.
"The White House Correspondents weekend traditionally dominated by legacy media parties. Celebrities show up, go to parties, and go home. Everything we do is geared at being a little bit of a disrupter," said Event Farm C.E.O. Ryan Costello. "We're not just putting brands on the wall, we are experimenting with the technology."
Tablets arranged on a wall invited guests to "give yourself a gift" by hovering their N.F.C.-enabled badges over a sensor. Sponsors offered digital swag that was delivered via email. Meanwhile, a group of staffers dubbed the "Selfie Squad" took photos with event guests and immediately posted them to social sites.
On May 21, the fund-raiser for the children's chorus was held at Vibiana in downtown Los Angeles. In the past, members of the chorus hand-wrote thank-you notes for the guests, but this year featured a twist: The young singers recorded their thank-you messages onto videos that were loaded onto iPads and placed at each table.
