16 Smart Ways to Promote Your Event Hashtag

Hugo celebrated the launch of its Reversed collection in partnership with Fashion and Title magazines in Toronto in November 2018. Burstyn Inc. designed and produced the 250-guest event, which celebrated Hugo’s roots with Berlin-theme activations, food and beverage, and entertainment. In addition to custom photo backdrops, a sweatshirt-customization area, a digital sketch artist, and more, the event’s hashtag was promoted through eye-catching hanging vinyl strips.

At Beautycon Los Angeles in August 2019, a vending machine asked attendees to tweet for prizes. A prompt instructed them to answer the question “What can beauty brands do to be more inclusive?” When they tweeted their answer using the #BeautyconLA hashtag, a prize would drop in the vending machine.

With its three-year-old Bold event series, the city of Beverly Hills aims to promote tourism and build a sense of community. A big part of Bold—which stands for “Beverly Hills Open Later Days”—is creating photo ops designed to be shared on social media, therefore promoting Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive as destinations. Experiential firm AGENC created a series of five photo boxes, including a popular flower-filled one on Two Rodeo Drive in August 2018.

A variety of 3-D chalk art on the sidewalk also promoted Bold’s hashtag in 2018. See more: Case Study: How Beverly Hills Uses Live Events to Boost Tourism—and Rack Up 280 Million Social Impressions

NASA celebrated Artemis, its new lunar exploration program, with a crowd-sourced activation at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington in October 2019. The 15-foot-long sculpture depicted the Artemis logo composed of 3,000 user-generated photos that had been submitted through Instagram and Twitter with the hashtag #NASAExhibit. Images were printed on site, and event guests applied them to the sculpture. The activation marked the debut of technology company Luster's Mosaic Sculptures, which are life-size art installations created from hashtagged social-media posts. See more: How NASA Created a Sculpture Made From Thousands of Selfies

For the 20th anniversary of its annual Wine Star Awards, which took place this January in San Francisco, Wine Enthusiast paid tribute to the last two decades of winners—most notably through an eye-catching Walk of Fame-style entryway that featured the names of past recipients in stars on the ground. The evening’s #WineStarAwards hashtag was prominently displayed above the walkway, reminding guests to use the tag when posting the social-friendly moment. See more: How This Gala Put Its Honorees Front and Center at a Milestone Event

Twitter had a massive presence at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, held in France in June 2019. The social platform partnered with Wonderland Agency to create Twitter Beach, a space open to attendees that featured a variety of programming, interactive stations, and photo ops. As a tribute to the final season of Game of Thrones, the brand created a take on the iron throne created with white boardwalk wood in the shape of hashtags. Pieces of wood featured hashtags of characters and quotes. See more: 10 Highlights From Twitter's Cannes Lions Beach Takeover

For its 20th birthday in 2014, Old Navy held a “selfiebration” in New York, complete with a “balloon billboard.” Covered with 1,000 custom balloons, the 15-foot billboard was created by Deeplocal, which referred to the creation as a selfie machine. The marketing agency’s software grabbed images from Twitter that had the #sefliebration hashtag and rasterized the photos to display them on the billboard via inflated balloons. See more: Old Navy Celebrates 20th Birthday With "Selfiebration" in Times Square

At Austin City Limits in October 2017, Chipotle set up its own food stand separate from the festival’s official food concessions. To help promote the stand, the company created a giant hashtag sculpture noting #LifeIsBurritoful, which offered a fun photo op for attendees. See more: After Las Vegas, How Austin City Limits Changed the Festival Experience

Luxury shopping neighborhood CityCenterDC hosted a fashion- and holiday-theme ice gallery event in December 2016. Produced by BrandLinkDC, the event featured more than 20 sculptures. CityCenter also incorporated a social media component to the event with the "Hashtag Mailbox," a branded mailbox provided by EventsTag that allowed shoppers to print hashtagged social media posts as physical postcards, which they could then mail out in the mailbox. See more: See How Ice Sculptures Turned a Shopping Center Into a Winter Wonderland

As part of the Today show’s second annual #ShareKindness campaign—which commits to the goal of inspiring one million acts of kindness across America—the Born This Way Foundation's #ShareKindness Experience was open to the public in New York in December 2016. At the event, the Lego Group created the Kindness Counter, a customized vessel into which Lego heart bricks were dropped after the hashtag #ShareKindness was used on social media. The activation also was used to track the goal of one million acts of kindness.

In February 2017, National Geographic hosted a movie premiere for its documentary Gender Revolution in Washington. Before the screening, a white wall with the hashtag #GenderRevolution emblazoned across the middle served as a decor element. Afterward, event producers RJ Whyte Event Production brought out paint and markers for guests to decorate the wall. A mixture of handprints and empowering statements about sexuality and gender identity covered the wall by the event's end. See more: Why Gender Became a Focal Point at These National Geographic Events

Delta Air Lines launched its new in-flight Innovation Class program—which works with LinkedIn to give up-and-coming business people the opportunity to sit next to leaders in their industries on select flights—at the TED Conference in Vancouver in 2014. The MKG-produced exhibit aimed to replicate the concept at ground level with a digital experience called Social Soul. It was driven by Twitter, first by surrounding users with content from their Twitter stream and then by displaying the stream of another conference attendee with similar interests. The exhibit was housed inside a 10- by 22-foot structure with 50 monitors covering the ceiling and mirrored tiles lining the walls and floor. Before stepping inside, attendees activated their experience by tweeting with the hashtag #SocialSoul. See more: How Delta Helped TED Attendees Find Their "Social Soul Mates"

Washington’s Pink Tie Party, which annually serves as the unofficial kickoff of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, took inspiration from cherry trees for its 10th-anniversary event in March 2016. Producers Linder Global Events and Design Foundry added the event hashtag to the main staircase, which served as the stage and backdrop for many photos throughout the night. See more: How to Grow Your Event Footprint Up, Not Out

St. Ives brought its immersive mobile tour called #NatureReset to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Columbus, Ohio, in the summer of 2019. The foliage-heavy #NatureReset double-decker bus, which was designed and produced by Mosaic North America, featured an eye-catching hashtag display and naturescapes that took inspiration from the ingredients in the newly launched St. Ives Face Mists. Visitors who used the hashtag were entered to win a photo expedition for two to Yellowstone National Park. See more: On the Road Again: How Brands Map Out Their Mobile Tours

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay hosted its annual "Big Night" fund-raiser in February 2015. The event's hashtag was spelled out in glowing neon tape on the floor, tying into the gala’s 1990s theme. See more: See a Benefit That Took Guests Back to the '90s