Campari just wrapped its House of Campari in Los Angeles, a pop-up that opened at the end of May and ran through this weekend at a vacant retail space on Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood. The pop-up hosted events with cultural and media partners like the MOCA Contemporaries and the Lacma Modern and Contemporary Arts Council. Private events also included performance art from the likes of Those Darlins, My Barbarian, Port O’Brien, and Anya Marina. The title exhibition, “First Look: An Exhibition of Emerging Artists from Los Angeles Galleries," a selection of up-and-coming local artists' works, was open to the public during gallery hours through the event's run.
"We've had an incredibly successful run. It’s like having a child every single time, a labor of love, so the closing night is always bittersweet," said Elizabeth Colton, the San Francisco-based PR and events manager for Skyy Spirits. "Campari has been a longstanding patron of the arts. We’ve worked with the likes of Fellini, so the history is there. And House of Campari is really the modern incarnation of that relationship."
Colton said that Los Angeles—the only city to host the pop-up this year—is a strong market for Campari, and has a significant visual arts community, which allows the brand to reach the right demographic. It was the installation's fourth year in town, but it has also appeared in New York and Miami over the past five years. "L.A. is a very important market for us. This is the marquee piece of the [arts-related marketing] program—kind of the glue that holds everything together," Colton said. "It's important to be able to sample the consumer in a relevant environment, and we have to create that. It’s not a measurable piece [in terms of R.O.I.], but it’s really important for the brands that have had a longstanding relationship [with arts] to say, 'We’re not going to disappear during this time. We’re going to do it as best we can for as long as we can.'"
Because of the hurting retail real estate market, Campari was able to secure the otherwise vacant Robertson Boulevard space at an attractive price. "We’ve got it down to a science in terms of what we need for the project, and absolutely this year was a different environment to be looking for venues. People were much more receptive to short-term arrangements. We would never have been able to afford this space in previous years, so the economy certainly played in our favor in this regard," Colton said. "This is our favorite space that we’ve been in—it provided great visibility for the brand, that brilliant exterior brand visibility. This is something we’d always wanted but not been able to squeeze into when the economy was hot."
Colton added, "On the flip side, our budgets were tighter so we had to make our dollars work harder for us. Our design team understood that and were able to bring the brand to life in the most creative, focused, and cost-efficient manner possible."
