Essence hosted its sixth annual Black Women in Music pre-Grammy event on Thursday at Avalon Hollywood, honoring and featuring a performance by Jill Scott. Colgate Optic White was a sponsor of the event, setting up a product station in front of a selfie-ready mirror decorated with a hashtag.
The arrivals backdrop—featuring the Cartier and MoMA logos rendered in neon and marquee lights—echoed the dense arrangements of tropical greenery found inside the dinner space.
The performance included a sea of illuminated orbs, held by performers clad in silver spandex. San Francisco company Got Light has similar fixtures, which they used at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Modern Ball in 2014. Got Light collaborated with Stanlee Gatti on the night's overall design.
The recently renovated Marriott Stanton South Beach in Miami Beach has debuted “Selfie Spots,” five areas within the beachfront hotel designated as the perfect place to snap selfies. The areas are marked by a circular sticker and have the hashtag #StantonSelfie and the hotel’s social handles.
At a Svedka vodka promotion in Los Angeles in 2013, guests played "life-size Jenga" using huge game pieces stamped with the name of the vodka brand.
Zeel, a service that dispatches massage therapists, sends staffers to meetings and events in the New York metro area, South Florida, the San Francisco Bay area and Silicon Valley, and Southern California. (Soon, the service will be available in San Diego and Las Vegas.) Massage therapists arrive at venues with their own massage tables and can perform services such as Swedish or deep-tissue massages for 60, 75, or 90 minutes. For meeting breaks, therapists can give 10- to 15-minute chair massages. The services can be booked 30 days in advance.
Billed as an "on-demand beauty service," Stylisted is an online platform that lets users or event hosts book on-location hairstyling or makeup services including airbrushing and lash application. Stylists can come to offices or hotels in Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles, and the service is available for private events.
Soothe is another on-demand beauty service that can be booked for meetings or private events in cities including Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, and Austin, Texas. This spring, the service will launch in San Francisco, Washington, Chicago, and New York. Individuals can use the service to book 60- to 120-minute massages at hotels or offices, while chair massages are available for groups. Bookings can be made online or via phone.
Priv, a beauty and wellness app, lets users book appointments for services such as blowouts, manicures, men's straight-razor shaves, and spray tanning. Staffers can travel to meetings and event spaces in New York, Southern California, and London. Company reps work with event hosts to determine the number of spa technicians needed at an event and can also arrange for kid-friendly services such as face painting and braid bars.
The mobile spa At Your Service travels to events and meetings throughout greater Toronto and specializes in providing services at fashion shows, media events, corporate gatherings, and spa parties. Hosts can book services including facials, manicures, pedicures, hairstyling, and eyelash application; meditation instruction, hot stone massages, and chair massages will be added to the menu soon.
In another activity area, guests painted cookies with watercolor paints. Cookies came from Joanie and Leigh's Cakes.
At the 2014 event in Toronto, guests were invited to participate in a doughnut-decorating challenge that let them customize their own treats with toppings such as chocolate and sprinkles.
Users entered the Bose Southbooth, covered in mirrors and disco balls, and chose a single song to add to the official Spotify SXSW playlist.
Playing off its "Off the Wall" tagline, Vans had a painter create portraits of festivalgoers. The paintings hung on a temporary wall on festival grounds and will be auctioned off at future Goose Island Brewery events. Proceeds will benefit the 606, a local park and trail system set to launch in the fall.
The space known as Pier 36 Basketball City hosted the Friends of the High Line's spring benefit on May 20. A combination of unpotted birches, redwoods, and other trees dotted the cocktail area, which featured a picnic scene in the center of the bar. The greenery was donated to community gardens and local parks following the event.
The mirror suspended above the installation allowed guests to see a clear shot of the action.
Adrienne Bosh, wife of Miami Heat basketball player Chris Bosh, hosted a motivational event dubbed “Glamchella” at 1 Hotel on Miami Beach on May 20. There were also custom cookies in the event's signature hues of gold and pink. The cookies were created by You Can Call Me Sweetie; the cupcakes were by Ooh My Sweetness.
Sparkly teepees were set up on the sand.
Looking for a summery group outing? Mustang Monument Wild Horse Eco-Retreat officially opened in Nevada this month and offers a Luxury California Wagon Trail Sleep Out. Guests sleep in luxury wagons, and dinner is cooked in a fireside cauldron while local Native Americans tell stories about their culture.
In Montana, the Resort at Paws Up hosts meetings and incentive programs on a 37,000-acre ranch. Groups can reserve a luxury camp, which has six tents, a dining pavilion, a fire pit, and staff including a chef and a camping butler. The resort offers plenty of outdoor teambuilding activities, such as horseback riding, fly-fishing, hatchet throwing, and a Chuckwagon Dinner that serves classic campground fare (think prime rib, baked beans, and fruit cobbler.)
At a media event in New York called “Ketchup’s Got A New Mustard” in late May, Heinz introduced a new mustard as well as its ad campaign of the same title. Peter Callahan Catering's test kitchen was turned into a backyard barbecue. The decor included Weber grills that served as tables.
Guests posed with oversize bottles of ketchup and mustard in front of a wall comprising hundreds of bottles of yellow mustard.
Founded by a team of Los Angeles-based executives and investors, Forelinx aims to become the go-to social network for the golf community. The scheduling tool allows users to connect with players who share similarities—on and off the course—via LinkedIn, as well as through site-recommended connections. Suitable for networking and client meetings, golfers can find and book tee times, locally or on the road, at more than 2,000 courses across the United States.
Perfect for pool parties and resort events is L.A. Photo Party's underwater photo booth. The self-contained unit includes a DSLR camera, strobe flash, preview monitor, and underwater trigger button. The booths are available globally; pricing is available upon request.
To mark the launch of a collaboration between Mindy Weiss and Wedding Paper Divas on a new collection, the well-known social event planner and the social stationer hosted an intimate, feminine luncheon at Los Angeles's new Lombardi House on February 25. Guests created their own terrariums using succulents, moss, and twigs for a D.I.Y. take on the trend of incorporating living elements into wedding decor.
Guests could also create their own bags of custom potpourri.
Shutterfly—which creates personalized gifts, cards, and decor—hosted a D.I.Y.- theme holiday event in November at Sopra in New York. The event offered crafty projects including a design-your-own pillow station.
Guests could also create personalized holiday canvas prints at the festive event.
At TEDActive in Palm Springs in 2013, the so-called Sovereign Nation of You station encouraged attendees to make representational flags for creative expression using felt and other materials.
Whole Foods hosted a miniature market selling fruits and other snacks on festival grounds. There was also a station with complimentary amenities such as sunscreen, hair ties and bobby pins, and scented sprays with labels such as "Mosh Pit Mint." A sign near the station read: "Refresh yourself before you wreck yourself."
Now available in Toronto through the Idea Hunter, Original Beverage Toppers are edible disks that can be branded with corporate logos, colors, and taglines. The discs float on top of hot, cold, iced, or frozen drinks and are easy to apply.
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.
Organizers created a temporary post office to make it easy for festival-goers to send merchandise home. Special perks included Bonnaroo postcards and the official Bonnaroo postmark.
