To Market We Go

This past Saturday was an early morning for the local team at Gen Art. Around 7 a.m., three staffers and a handful of interns arrived at Union Station to begin setup for Shop Chicago, an annual, all-day shopping fest where more than 80 local designers and boutiques display their wares. With 4,000 R.S.V.P.s and a staggering amount of vendor tables to set up before 3 p.m., the crew had their work cut out for them. And taking care of sponsors was top of the order.

This was the first event of its kind for Laura Lachman, who became special events director of Gen Art Chicago in January and had been planning the event since her appointment. Though her planning process involved everything from reaching out to vendors to finding interns to man the check-in, Lachman said her main focus was finding creative ways to market event sponsors. Known for attracting a young, artsy crowd, Gen Art had the task of “getting our audience to experience brands in ways that would get them excited about the sponsors,” Lachman said.Shop Chicago sponsors ranged from birth-control pill Seasonique to Acura and furniture store Room & Board, and Lachman and her team devised fitting ways to showcase each brand. For Seasonique, Gen Art hired Heffernan Morgan to create a lounge surrounded by walls of billowy teal and white fabric (Seasonique's signature colors). Within the lounge, an ob-gyn sat on a couch piled with branded pillows, ready to chat with women (and, presumably, curious men) about the pill. Candle-flecked highboys and plush leather chairs rounded out the space, which Lachman described as “a calm environment where people could take a break" from the surrounding shopping mayhem.

To lure guests into an on-site Acura, Gen Art turned the car into the location of an impromptu photo shoot. After having their makeup done by artists from Colorlab Custom Cosmetics, partygoers hopped inside the car and posed for a camera. The resulting photo became the cover for mock magazine Chicago Runway, and guests left their e-mail addresses so that pictures could be sent to them after the event.

Room & Board showcased its goods by providing furniture for a V.I.P. area on the mezzanine level of the station. In the area, black couches, animal skin rugs, and glass coffee tables created a living-room feel. (In lieu of coffee-table books, thick Room & Board catalogs sat in piles on each table.) Berry Chill's mobile yogurt bar, which came stocked with two frozen yogurt machines and nine toppings ranging from low-fat granola to crushed Oreos, stood in one corner of the lounge. On the other side of the room, a private bar offered wines from Little Black Dress, another event sponsor.

As the sun set, sponsors' names became visible on the walls of Union Station’s ground level, which is topped with a skylight. A Gen Art gobo (which had been obstructed by sunlight all morning) became visible on the wall outside the mezzanine, and sponsor-name-bearing plasma screens became easier to read. William Mellina, an engineer from Sound Investment, was relieved at the late-afternoon change in light. Asked about his greatest challenge for the day, he said, “Unfortunately, I don’t have a dial for the sun."