USA Network's public-service campaign "Characters Unite" is aimed at putting an end to hate and discrimination. Earlier this month, the network launched a national bus tour called "I Won't Stand For." Stopping in cities such as Nashville, Atlanta, and Cleveland, the activation lets visitors personalize the "I Won't Stand For" tag line by adding in a word or phrase that resonates with them; choices include "sexism," "religious intolerance," and "homophobia." Guests can have their pictures taken with their custom statement and then share the images on Instagram using the hashtag #IWontStandFor. The photos also become part of the network's online photo gallery.
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.
To promote its new fashion blog the Cut during New York Fashion Week in September, New York magazine tapped Grand Central Marketing to dispatch a fleet of branded vehicles that served as shuttles for V.I.P. attendees. To engage the online community, the brand hosted the Cut Shuttle Fashion Forward Sweepstakes. Participants were encouraged to upload photos of the shuttles to Instagram using the hashtag #thecutshuttle; anyone who did was automatically entered to win prizes including tickets to fashion shows.
Last year, Toyota launched the #ToyotaGiving campaign. The initiative, which company reps describe as a "campaign that harnesses the power of the public via Instagram at events across the country," raises funds for community and nonprofit organizations. The campaign stopped at Lollapalooza in Chicago in August, and invited guests to write a statement on a blackboard that described their individual commitments to bettering themselves and their communities. Guests then posted photos of those statements to Instagram and Twitter using the #ToyotaGiving hashtag. For every tagged tweet or Instagram post, Toyota donated $2 to a nonprofit partner. In total, the campaign generated 4,000 Twitter and Instagram impressions, and proceeds went to 11 different organizations.
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.
Retailer South Moon Under partnered with Rock the Vote for its inaugural Summer Spin Pool Party August 3 at the Embassy Row Hotel rooftop. To expand the reach of the intentionally intimate pool soiree beyond its 100 invite-only guests, event planner Jessica Hoy of NeuProfile put a social media spin on a familiar item: the gift bag. Converse, Lacoste, Stila, Kate Somerville cosmetics, and others contributed beach-related products like towels, sunglasses, and sunscreen to the gift bags. Hoy set up stations for each of the 11 sponsors with tent cards of the hosting brands’ Twitter handles and event hashtags. Bloggers and other partygoers took photos of the tables and wrote about the products individually rather than just collectively in a single story. Guests then showed a staffer their tweets on the way out to receive a bag.
As the sun went down in Cannes, France, June 17, Twitter fired up a 40,000-lumens Barco projector mounted on a roof 150 feet across a street from the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès. The venue was the site of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, a weeklong award program to recognize creative excellence in advertising and communications. For the next several hours, a 3-D projection of tweets using the official event hashtag, #CannesLions, appeared on a 35- by 65-foot billboard located 30 feet above the venue’s entrance. The digital activation, created by Incredible Machines, ran for five hours that night and for the next three nights, while during the day the billboard showed a static image of the hashtag printed on canvas. The top tweets with the hashtag were projected onto the billboard at night, and the display also included live tweets from specific users that were selected by Twitter. The projection was a success, garnering substantial interest from the festival’s 12,000 attendees and contributing to more than 91,000 tweets using #CannesLions. That’s a 51 percent increase compared to 2012 and translated to a total reach of 542 million people, according to Buzz Radar. To generate excitement the first night, Twitter hosted a gathering in a penthouse across the street from the billboard right before the projector turned on.
Godiva Chocolatier designed part of a new product launch to promote social sharing. The Godiva Truffle Takeoff Tour introduced truffle flights, which package six truffles along a similar theme, arranged by intensity, like wine or beer flights. At the New York kickoff September 17 at Gansevoort Plaza, passersby could sample truffles and pose for photos in front of six tableaux. Playing off of the campaign tagline of “every truffle tells a story,” the tongue-in-cheek scenes included the tiramisu truffle's “Tiara Miss-U Pageant,” where people could wear tiaras and sashes on a stagelike setting, a “Take Flight” scene in which people stood in front of wings created from frilly feathers, and a sports-theme “It's Crunch Time” scene in which people could lift dumbbells that had giant nut truffles in place of weights. Large screens displayed social posts that used the #TruffleTakeoff hashtag.
For a highly visual—and Instagram-friendly—photo opp, social media prompts served as props against a grassy wall decorated with Veuve bottles at the fourth annual Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic at Will Rogers State Historic Park in Los Angeles on October 5. Working with Veuve director of communications Christine Kaculis, BrownHot Events produced the event once again with the chic, subtly branded details that characterize the annual sporting event.
Ben & Jerry’s dished out about 16,000 cups of free Bonnaroo Buzz, Late Night Snack, and other flavors of its ice cream—and gained more than 2,000 new Twitter followers—during its Summer Scoop Truck Tour in Miami in 2011. The program, managed by Gigunda Group, invited the brand’s fans on Twitter and Facebook to help determine where the truck would stop each day, with the goal of raising the brand’s profile in the Miami market and attracting new customers.
Wine tastings typically stick to a format that involves stations, swirling, and sipping, but a recent event in Toronto broke free of any staid formulas. Underscoring its company name, Open Wine hosted an event at 2nd Floor in April that had a “Be Open” theme, and guests were encouraged to open themselves up to more than just new types of vino. Plenty of the host company's product was on hand, but tasting the wine was just a jumping-off point for a night that included ping-pong tournaments, liquid-nitrogen doughnuts, temporary tattoos, and lots of tweeting. Guests placed R.F.I.D.-enabled wine glasses down on the so-called “Bird Box,” which was created for the event and pre-programmed with action tweets, which encouraged guests to participate in various activations at the event. The tweets from @Open_Wines included: "Hey @[user], Damn, you look great. Find our photog @textstyles + pose for a photo so we can remember this FOREVER. #BeOPENparty."
In an effort to find an innovative way to encourage tweeting at AT&T-sponsored events, Team Epic worked with Brightline Interactive to develop what it calls a “Twitter balloon”: a balloon six feet in diameter connected to an air compressor that is activated by tweets with a particular hashtag. “There are a lot of Twitter walls that show tweets as they come in, but this performs a physical action and it happens within less than a second,” said Andrew Knutson, manager for Team Epic. “As soon as you tweet, you hear the air going to the balloon, which is pretty cool. You’ll see crowds forming, especially as the balloon gets bigger.” AT&T unveiled the balloon at the N.C.A.A. Final Four men's basketball championship last spring and has since used it at events such as the Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival in San Francisco, the College World Series in Omaha, CMA Music Festival in Nashville, and Music Midtown in Atlanta. Signage at the events encourages attendees to tweet with a particular hashtag. Each tweet triggers a burst of air into the balloon, and the person whose tweet causes the balloon to pop wins a prize such as an AT&T phone.
As the 80,000 attendees at last year’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival celebrated on a Tennessee farm, news of their daily activities was posting to Facebook, creating nearly 1.5 million social impressions. But the attendees weren’t pulling out their smartphones to connect to Facebook; instead they were swiping wristbands with R.F.I.D. technology at one of 20 check-in portals around the 700-acre venue.
At London Fashion Week in September, Topshop tested a new app that allowed it to transmit photos, Web links, and other content to mobile devices using sound. The mobile app Chirp, available as a free download, shares data via a 1.8-second series of notes that sound similar to birdsong. The “chirps” played on speakers at the show in Regent’s Park and also in Topshop’s Oxford Circus store, where the retailer created what it called a “digital garden” with monitors suspended from trees like birdhouses. Folks within earshot of the speakers who had the app open on their phones instantly received the content, which included runway images, photos of the clothes being made, backstage activities, and hair and makeup preparations. Recipients could tap on the images to receive additional information, and they could also share the images via Twitter, Facebook, and email.
Magic, the massive fashion trade event in Las Vegas, wants to be a 365-day-a-year platform that lives far beyond its venues’ walls. To that end, Magic tapped more than 50 official bloggers to curate content throughout the 2011 show. The selection was based on the quality of bloggers' content, unique points of view, and their understanding of the business of fashion.
To get a treat from a Polaroid vending machine at Ocean Drive's Sun Covered pool party as part of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Swim in Miami, guests had to tweet a code that would activate the machine.
At the Sunday-night event, faux industrial beams added major visual drama to tent ceilings. The design of the bash was inspired by the ultimate New York loft, according to producer 15/40 Productions.
HBO and Mediaplacement invited media and celebrity guests for the annual HBO Luxury Lounge at the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills. At the event, Pandora gifted its rings to guests and provided a mini red carpet—complete with a tiny step-and-repeat wall—for photo ops of hands. It was a logical complement to the adjacent manicure stations.
The sporty expo was held January 9 to 11 at the Orange County Convention Center, and offered clever branding ideas. Recessed shadow boxes decorated the shingled walls of Salt Life's booth, creating the illusion of looking through a window underwater.
Freaker, a maker of fabric bottle insulators, used a box truck as its booth. Staff drove the truck from the company's North Carolina headquarters right onto the trade show floor in Orlando.
To hype the season-five premiere of Archer, FX offered public “man-overs” on January 9 and 10. Inspired by the well-kept character Agent Sterling, the activation was overseen by Awestruck Marketing. In a glass truck set up on the streets of New York, guests received complimentary shoe shines and haircuts.
The seventh annual culinary gathering was held December 13 to 17 at venues throughout Palm Beach County. There was no shortage of cute presentation ideas at the festival, including pulled pork sliders placed atop an appropriately pig-shaped platter at the reception before the Breakers' Savannah-theme dinner.
At the Grand Tasting event, there was a twist on the oversize photo frame. Guests posed with a prop designed like the Instagram app. It had several pre-written hashtags and a username from sponsor Alex and Ani, a jewelry brand.
The Art of Elysium held its seventh annual black-tie gala on Saturday at the Skirball Cultural Center. Guests bid on the event's handcrafted tables, which will be donated to hospitals as surfaces for children to create art.
Chicago's Redmoon Theater, which is known for its dreamy, surrealistic style, recently hosted its first New Year's Eve party. The evening had several fresh ideas for food-and-beverage services, including silk aerialists who descended from the center a giant chandelier to pour champagne for guests.
This week, our roundup of childhood snacks with adult spins included a swanky lemonade stand. Over the summer, the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel & Spa in California launched the Lemon Break. The catering package includes a lemonade display replete with lemon tarts, lemon sorbet, lemon candies, lemon confit, lemon drops, lemon shooters, lemon chiffon cakes, lemon crème brûlées, and more thematic treats.
As the official airline sponsor of the Los Angeles Marathon, Air France hosted numerous activations surrounding the race on February 14. The airline brand took over Mile 16 of the marathon in front of City Hall in Beverly Hills, providing music from DJ Lam and cheerleaders wearing French attire.
El Conquistador, a Waldorf Astoria Resort and Spa in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, launched a Taste of Caribbean Rums Tour for groups. During the experience—which features rums native to Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands—groups will learn about the island's culture, history, and distilling process. The experience is $11 per person and requires a minimum of 50 people.
The N.B.A. All-Star Weekend took place February 12 to 14 in Toronto, and with it came numerous sponsor and brand experiences that promoted new campaigns and products. Nike turned a Toronto Transit streetcar into a mobile store, dubbing it the Snkrs Xpress. Inside, Nike Plus members were treated to a curated selection of footwear and could check out historic styles from the "DNA Vault" as the streetcar cruised the area for 25 minutes.
Samsung Electronics America participated in N.B.A. All-Star activities for a third year. The Samsung Experience was housed inside the N.B.A. Centre Court and included player appearances, fan rewards, and activities such as getting basketball skill and performance feedback using the new Samsung Gear S2.
Adidas partnered with Toronto photographer Horace Ng to transform a space on Queen Street West into an brand activation that doubled as a photo and art installation.
During a commercial break during the 58th annual Grammy awards on Monday, Target aired a live music video for Gwen Stefani's new single, "Make Me Love You." The four-minute video was shot on a 32,000-square-foot soundstage at the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank, and involved multiple costume set changes, all of which were branded with the retailer's bull's-eye logo and color schemes. While the video aired on CBS, viewers could watch in real time from a different perspective on Facebook, Snapchat, and Periscope.
The Recording Academy's after-party for the 58th annual Grammy awards took place February 15 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. An oversize high-heel shoe prop decorated the event's main stage.
Event sponsor McDonald's showcased a photo booth with a bed, which promoted the restaurant's new breakfast-all-day offerings.
A real working fountain in the center of the space included water that danced in choreographed programming.
Be it a friend's surprise birthday party or a corporate meeting, event pros looking for a new tool to manage and promote their next event might want to check out Konvene. Hosts can create their events in the iOS and Android app, add information such as location, description, whether it's public or private, and tags designating the type of event. If the event requires a ticket, the app can manage payments and check-in. Guests can also use the app to find events, view the guest list, chat with attendees, post photos, or provide a post-event rating.
