Here's a look at 10 steal-worthy ideas we spotted this week, including a giant Twitter billboard in France, deep-fried meatloaf in Minnesota, a garden within a garden in Chicago, and cocktails on a conveyer belt in Toronto.
On June 8, the Big Bang Bash took over the Royal Ontario Museum to celebrate the opening of the "Viktor & Rolf Dolls" exhibition; the gala also marked the opening of the Luminato multidisciplinary arts festival. A conveyer belt served everything from cocktails to cupcakes to poached lobster tails.
The Minnesota State Fair, August 22 to September 2, just announced its latest gluttonous offerings. Included: Homemade meat loaf deep-fried and served on a stick with a red pepper wine glaze from Minnesota Wine Country.
At the annual BET Pre pre-award dinner at Milk Studios on July 7, Andre Wells's production and design included vibrant watercolors, peacocks, and an overall ethereal look and feel. At the cocktail reception, Wells's team used tones of red, butter, fuschia, purple, teal, green, navy, and midnight blue to create a vivid look. Club sofas, ottomans, and circle chairs from Revelry were all done in the vibrant tones. A live Twitter wall showed guests interacting on social media.
The South Beach sun gave a summery backdrop for Cosmopolitan en Español’s beach bash, which returned to Nikki Beach for the late-afternoon event June 22. The beauty-themed, indoor-outdoor event infused the beach property with Latin flavor. Event staff wore colorful tunics from sponsor Samsara Imports.
Procter & Gamble celebrated its "Everyday Effect" campaign—the largest consumer event in the company's 175-year history—by hosting a citywide sampling event on June 19. To easily shuttle consumers to pop-up experiences around Manhattan, event producers Citizen Paine and Gigunda offered custom blue pedicabs.
Clarks's annual award dinner took place at Boston's Royale Nightclub June 11. Max Ultimate Catering set the first course on wooden slabs that had the footwear company's logo burned into them. The course included a fire-roasted shrimp stake with heirloom tomatoes, cucumber, watermelon, radish, and asparagus, all drizzled with a wine vinaigrette.
Building on last summer's campaign that brought branded bicycles mounted with water coolers to several regions, Fiji Water launched its latest initiative June 1. The new promotion, dubbed "Discover the Finer Things," still involves brand ambassadors on bikes, but this time the pedal-powered vehicles come with attached "vaults." As reps hand out bottles of the brand's water, participants also receive combination codes for a chance to unlock the vaults and receive prizes like Uber and Gilt City gift cards or a trip to the Venetian Las Vegas. If the code fails to unlock the vault, guests still leave with the new, reusable Fiji Straw.
The Chicago Botanic Garden hosted its ninth annual Summer Dinner Dance on June 21. For dinner, a tent decorated by HMR Designs created a garden-within-a-garden setting. Tucked into the venue's lush Rose Garden, the tent was draped in moss silk and strung with nine birdcage chandeliers. The cages, in turn, were strung with white lilies, and pillars were wrapped in trellises.
With a guest list dominated by children, the launch of JW Marriott's new kids' menu offered food geared toward keeping young ones entertained. The lively and colorful event, held last month at the JW Marriott Essex House, was hosted by nutritionist Keri Glassman, who created the menu. Nutritious snacks had easy-to-handle presentations for little hands and included colorful melon balls presented like cake pops.
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 site of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. 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.
