After kicking off in Chicago earlier this month to much success, with co-curators the Roots and Q-Tip, Hennessy’s fifth annual Artistry tour descended on Miami on Saturday. Music enthusiasts mingled with press and V.I.P.s for a night of eclectic musical performances, cocktails, and mixed media.
Having skipped Miami last year in favor of Atlanta—in keeping with its theme of unexpected blends in music, culture, and art, Hennessy switches up its host cities as well as its talent lineup each year—the invite-only concert series returned to South Florida. This was the second stop in a five-city tour that started in Chicago and will move on to Los Angeles, Detroit, and New York. The October 14 event in New York will also give users worldwide a chance to view a live feed of the performances via Ustream on the Hennessy Facebook page—a first for this series.
This year, Hennessy opted to use a raw venue in Miami as opposed to a club, and worked with Tony Berger’s New York-based Relevent Group to customize the Ice Palace, a former ice factory in the city’s budding cultural center. “The difference with other years is that we can build out these raw spaces to be truly individual, whereas when we’re working with other accounts, the challenge is reworking what’s already built in,” said Hennessy’s vice president of experiential marketing, Billy Paretti.
The space allowed the approximately 1,300 guests to move freely between two large rooms, one dedicated to the dance floor, DJ booth, and stage, and the other to branded interactive elements, such as a Hennessy photo booth and a Hennessy Artistry Music Mixer—a DJ mixing station using iPads prepackaged with music and the popular DJ Mixer application. Trained brand ambassadors from Victory Models, dressed in Hennessy’s signature black and gold, were on hand to help guests use the station.
“The tour started in 2006 to basically promote mixability of cognac to our core consumers and also to recruit new consumers into the Hennessy universe,” said Paretti. “In the past couple of years we’ve moved from ‘the global art of mixing’ to ‘the art of blending,’ because it seemed more important to us in terms of a communication point—the blending of rare eau-de-vie is what really makes Hennessy exceptional. And without blending, we wouldn’t have culture, we wouldn’t have music, there wouldn’t be art. So we thought, why not show exceptional blending in these areas?”
The performances were meant to not only be surprising, but also “energizing and inspiring,” added Paretti, who worked with Alloy Media & Marketing to secure talent. Because Miami is a very multicultural market in comparison with other U.S. cities, the lineup was meant to reflect that. Joining backing band the Roots and Q-Tip—who as a producer, rapper, DJ, and actor is a master blender of sorts—were Dominican pop star Kat DeLuna, Aussie singer Daniel Merriweather, rapper Eve, and R&B legend Bobby Brown, who was billed as the surprise icon.
Also blended were four cocktails; guests had their choice of mixing Hennessy with apple, citrus, ginger, or berry. On the food menu were chicken skewers, California rolls, meatballs in barbecue sauce, and marshmallows dipped in chocolate, courtesy of CuisineWorks.
