What can send New Yorkers into a hula hooping, basketball hurling, clothes stripping frenzy? Apparently, free candy and the chance to dine with Survivor II runner-up Colby Donaldson. At a lunchtime event in Bryant Park designed to promote the new Body Smarts candies, audience participants engaged in a series of complicated relay races and trivia contests, all in competition for the grand prize, a seat at dinner with Donaldson.
The target audience for the event (and the candy bars) is the general public, so event coordinators GCI Group chose to target the noon crowd of office workers and tourists eating lunch in the park. Meant to appease the guilt of a junk food binge, the vitamin-filled candy bars and fruit chews marketed by Adams, a division of Pfizer, were implied to be a good match for the body-challenging tasks, as well as Donaldson's Survivor exploits.
The two-hour event featured contests and piles of promotional giveaways, with Donaldson--booked through Celebrities Plus, which also helped coordinate the event--acting as M.C. The colorful stage setup, designed by GCI and produced by Anderson Hannant, and the presence of local radio station WPLJ drew a crowd of several hundred.
--Samantha Melamed
The target audience for the event (and the candy bars) is the general public, so event coordinators GCI Group chose to target the noon crowd of office workers and tourists eating lunch in the park. Meant to appease the guilt of a junk food binge, the vitamin-filled candy bars and fruit chews marketed by Adams, a division of Pfizer, were implied to be a good match for the body-challenging tasks, as well as Donaldson's Survivor exploits.
The two-hour event featured contests and piles of promotional giveaways, with Donaldson--booked through Celebrities Plus, which also helped coordinate the event--acting as M.C. The colorful stage setup, designed by GCI and produced by Anderson Hannant, and the presence of local radio station WPLJ drew a crowd of several hundred.
--Samantha Melamed