How to Create a Sample Strategy for Your Experiential Event that Benefits You and Your Guests

How to Create a Sample Strategy for Your Experiential Event that Benefits You and Your Guests

---

There is simply no better marketing strategy for consumer-packaged goods (CPG) than a unique, fun, and interactive experiential event. For those in the food and beverage industry, you know that nothing can better promote your unique product and introduce guests to the flavor and personality of your brand than letting potential customers try it!

Whether you are promoting a new tropical daiquiri flavor, a delicious artisan bread recipe, or a well-aged whiskey, planning a successful sampling strategy for your next experiential marketing event can increase consumer engagement and boost sales for your brand. Here are a few tips from the pros for creating a sample strategy for your next event.

Tips for a Successful Experiential Sampling Strategy

• Show Your Versality to Reach a Bigger Market – Spotlight the versatility of your product by targeting a different demographic at your sampling event. Wholly Guacamole is a perfect example. They wanted to reach a slightly older crowd than they usually do, so they set up outside of a sporting event rather than a music festival. The new approach included the Guac Stop, where attendees could customize their guacamole sampling with 12 toppings. They also offered interactive events that appealed to their new consumer target like corn hole, giant Jenga, and even a Twitter vending machine that rewarded those who Tweeted about the event with prizes of brand swag.
• Go Where the Fans Are – If you want to reach a particular target audience, location is truly everything. Go where the fans are for an easy-peasy and successful event. Pepsi’s newest line, IZZE Fusions, wanted to make sure every teen around is aware of their new beverage. They made it a point to set up their summer sampling tour, which gave teenagers a taste of augmented reality, at popular teen events like music festivals, malls, and water parks. Giving teens a taste of the product and engaging with them on their level allowed Pepsi to get their attention and present a positive vibe to attract them with digital content and product.  The event included interactive play labs, refreshment zones, and immersive experiences like Camp IZZE.
• Keep it Simple and Spotlight Your Product – Sometimes you just have to keep it simple and show them what you’ve got to offer. That’s what High Brew Cold Brew Coffee did for their summer sampling event. Inspired by the brand’s travel/adventure messaging, they hit the road in a refurbished 1950’s coach bus to introduce and let millennials sample their ready-to-drink cold brew coffee. They made stops at trade shows, grocery stores, and festivals; offering a no-frills experience. Aside from a few bar stools and a sampling bar, the only other interactive option they had was an old-fashioned style post card station, where people could send a post card with a BOGO coupon to a friend.
• Change Your Brand’s Perception – If your brand is stuck in a rut and you want to change the way it is viewed by consumers, it’s time to change your brand’s perception. The Glenlivet Scotch had a reputation for being an “old school” drink best enjoyed in stuffy board rooms filled with old gents in leather chairs. To change this perception, their sampling strategy offered a sleek black and natural wood outdoor patio to drive their modern message about Scotch consumption. Popping up at food and wine festivals everywhere, this sampling showed that Scotch, especially when paired with the trending Scotch-inspired craft cocktails, is a good choice for all ages for all occasions.

To ensure your event is successful, be sure to do your research and be clear on the goals you wish to accomplish during your experiential marketing event. By spotlighting the taste and personality of your brand at a fun and interactive event with a clever sampling strategy, you will gain new customers who will help spread the word and help your brand grow, resulting in a win-win event for everyone!

How to Boost Your Brand by Hosting Themed Proprietary Events

Sponsoring events has long been a staple of marketing, but it may be a good idea for your company to take that concept further than just putting its sign on someone else's attraction. The most impactful way to do this is to host the entire event so that it's all yours. Not only does this give you unlimited ad placements, it allows you to engineer the entire experience for both the participants and the audience. This type of extravaganza is known as a proprietary event.

Companies that have done well with these events have learned to focus on a few powerful goals that will help their brands and marketing efforts. Here are two of the top effects that your own events should seek to achieve:

Authenticity

When you host a proprietary event, you have total control over the experience. Use it to project a feeling that is authentic in light of your existing brand image. A good example has been set by beer company Corona, which typically advertises using beach imagery. At their event, they included underwater photos as an attraction. They also used several themes that fit beer in general, such as parties and music, to associate their brand with fun. Corona's proprietary events are tied in with larger EDM festivals, which gives them an easy way to bring an audience over to their areas.

A Connection with Attendees and Participants

Proprietary events are the perfect vehicles for providing a fully-immersive experience that will form a bond with those who partake. Such an effect was achieved by energy bar maker CLIF Bar, which recently held events involving costumed teams of four who raced through an obstacle course. Seventy-five teams partook in the challenge, while 8,300 spectators looked on. This themed event was perfect for the company since it established a connection not only with fans, but with its own image as a brand for physically-active people.

Other Opportunities to Consider

As the host of an event, your company has the chance to bring in appropriate sponsors of its own. For example, when CLIF hosts events, it often allows local companies like bicycle shops to join in on the fun.

Done correctly, allowing smaller companies to get in on the show will simply further your theme and help cement your own brand's position in the market. Of course, sponsors also help to defray the costs of hosting the event.

If you're looking for a Miami venue for a proprietary event, contact us here at Soho Studios. We have up to 70,000 square feet of configurable space for your new extravaganza.

Coachella 2017: When Brands Create Experiential Marketing Trends

Who doesn’t like sun, drinks, music and fashion? Coachella, the much-loved CA-based music festival, is packed with fashion brand representation. This year, a slew of brands flocked to the desert, capitalizing on Coachella’s rad fashion collection. It wasn’t all about the brands, but they certainly made a splash. Whether it was shop-able runways, hip bars, social media activations or entire branded festival lines, Coachella was the place to be. Here’s our coverage of the hottest Coachella marketing events.

Levi’s Creates Neon Carnival

Posted up in an Airstream, Levi’s gave eventgoers a power-packed experience via Tequila Don Julio. We know, it’s an odd partnership. It worked, though, and Levi’s-lovers reveled in the specialty drinks from dusk til’ dawn.

Jeremy Scott’s Moschino Party

Produced by XA, Jeremy Scott’s Moschino party featured a kitschy, Candy Crush theme. It was larger-than-life, giving guests the chance to slide into a massive ball pit. The balls were made of lucite, ignited by the pool’s neon glow.

As if that wasn’t enough, the party also featured an oversized Absolut Lite-Brite installation. Guests could place different pieces into different slots, crafting their own art, patterns and long-lasting displays. The display took on Absolut’s lime flavor color, casting a memorable light.

Victoria’s Secret Angel Escape

The Angel Escape was an islandic tent, offering comfortable seating, shade and pillows for guests. While it covered a large amount of land, it was surprisingly low-key—in a good way. Customers looking for a reprieve from Coachella’s frequently rowdy atmosphere need only step into the tent’s intimate enclosure, taking a load off the feet.

The Katy Perry Footwear Easter Sunday Recovery Brunch

For the afterparty-goers, Katy Perry Footwear featured a Sunday Recovery Brunch powered by the H.Wood Group. Sure, it might’ve been a graphic, neo-art doughnut wall, but it certainly ignited holiday cheer with an awesome nod to pastel.

The Ciroc Summer Take Over

Ironically—or, perhaps unironically—alcohol brands promoted, well, themselves at Coachella. Ciroc, in particular, hosted memorable experiential events for patrons’ eyes. The Ciroc Summer Take Over, hosted by the Hard Rock Hotel, presented the brand in a new light—a vintage one, to be exact. Ciroc bottles were displayed alongside vintage objects, florals and vinyl records, giving event goers a taste of all things classy.

Coachella is a wonderful opportunity for brands. Featuring some of today’s leading brands, the event was a powerhouse of experiential displays. We’ve kept our eye on Coachella for a while, as it always highlights emergent experiential marketing trends. We'll likely see more great displays next year. For now, however, we'll make due with this year's awesome brand contributions—powered by today's leading providers.

Frisk Clean Breath Launches Brutally Honest Breath Meter

Not every experiential marketing event involves getting thousands of people together in one spot. The latest campaign from Frisk Clean Breath, a maker of breath mints, chose to go where people already are. It set up a machine in shopping malls and similar venues that promised to be "brutally honest" about people's breath. The machine was appropriately called Frisk, the Brutally Honest Breath Meter. Passers-by soon noticed the machines and breathed into the tube sticking out of the front. When they did, the machine responded with something extremely unexpected for a marketing campaign: Insults! Every response colorfully insulted the user's breath. It would light up words like "your breath is so bad that your toothbrush mistakes itself for a toilet brush." Then, it would dispense anywhere from a few to a huge amount of Clean Breath Mints. As it did this, it promised that the mints would keep the person's breath fresh for at least two hours.

The reactions of the people who got these analyses typically involved some sort of surprised exclamation. This got even more passers-by to stop and see what was going on. Soon, they too would blow into the machine and get their own brutally honest assessments. As this happened, Frisk recorded the reactions.

Once the company had enough reactions collected, it picked out the best ones. Then it made a TV commercial that has been called one of the best of the year. This ad showed what the machine said, how the people reacted to it, and how many mints it dispensed. In one case, it dispensed so many that it looked like the person had won a decent-sized slot machine jackpot – that was paid in mints!

Like other great experiential marketing campaigns, this one by Frisk is innovative, unexpected, and contains more than one phase. The first phase lets regular people directly experience the product in an unforgettable way. Then, the second phase shows the results in a way that makes viewers feel like they were almost a part of the original event. The combination is far more exciting than traditional advertising, which has become a bore due to overexposure. People remember experiential advertising in part because it is so different than the usual.

While this campaign didn't use a specific private venue, many do. If you're looking for a place to hold a big marketing extravaganza, look no further than Soho Studios in Miami. Soho has up to 70,000 square feet of space – enough room to fit a huge crowd under its roof. Contact us today to set up a reservation or learn how we can cater to your specific event.

Pokémon Go: How Can Event Planners Use this New Trend

Without a doubt you've heard about this craze that is sweeping not only the United States, but the entire world. Perhaps you're even an avid player. In fact, chances are good that you are. Few apps have seen such fast success, or put out such incredible numbers of engagement at any point during their existence. Released in the United States on July 6, the app had more downloads from the Apple iTunes store than any other app in history in its first week, and on Android devices, the app was being used twice as much as Facebook. What can an event planner learn from all of this record breaking user engagement?

How is Pokémon Go Different?

The popularity of apps ebb and flow. Every so often, a new trend will stick around, but regardless of staying power, there is one thing that truly sets Pokémon Go apart from the rest, something that event planners in particular should take notice of. While many popular social media sites like Instagram or Snapchat will encourage users to go out in the world to get better pictures or stories, it's completely up to the user how and where to go, and a creative user can use those services to equally great effect by staying home. But Pokémon Go, by its nature as a location based game with a virtual reality component, dictates the terms of where its users must go to participate.

Already events and businesses have been noting the success of Pokémon Go, and taking advantage of the game directly, from the Republican Convention setting up as a Pokémon Gym (a place where players can battle each other) to a Hillary Clinton campaign event hosted at a Pokéstop (where players can catch Pokémon), it's use as an effective engagement tool, is one thing both sides of the aisle can agree on. At the recent Comic Con convention in San Diego, they created a tie-in by including pointers on where to hunt Pokémon in their city guide and a New York chocolate shop has been creating Pokémon chocolates and offering discounts to players. At this time, there is no way to interact directly with game creators for sponsorship, but there are lots of opportunities to reference the game. But there's even more to be learned.

Using Augmented Reality to Create a Real World Adventure Based on a Great Story

As Woody Allen once said, "Showing up is 80 per cent of success." For the event planners, getting their target audience to show up can feel like the single factor that determines success. In the very beginning of its popularity, a lot was made about the fitness benefits of the game, and with good reason. The first person to "catch 'em all" dropped eight pounds in two weeks. What is it about this game that gets people to leave the many conveniences of the contemporary world, from endless streaming video services, to top video games, to whiling away hours on Facebook?

Pokémon has been around for 20 years, and while enjoying a similar sort of popularity in the 90s, it's current incarnation transcends age. As any great marketer well knows, getting successful engagement is all about having a great story. But the genius of Pokémon Go lies in its integration of that strong backstory with the latest technology, from geolocation to virtual reality. By combining a gaming aspect, with a fun competitive edge, they have done a remarkable job of getting people to leave their arm chairs and engage.

At Soho Studios we take great pride in offering the cutting edge of event planning services along with state of the art and beautiful spaces. To find out how you can apply more of the lessons of the success of Pokémon Go to your next event, give us a call.

The official champagne of Art Basel Miami Beach

You may not know this yet, but this is the third year that Ruinart, world's preeminent champagne brand, is a proud sponsor of Art Basel Miami Beach. This particular prestigious Miami event and is an internationally revered art show for international art works from around the planet. For the 2013 event, the company came up with the "Miroir" ice bucket from French designer Herve Van der Straeten.

It is an angular container comprising what can be best described as a folding enclosure of flat mirrored sides, slightly inclined. You might say that the container offers a peculiarly angular and flat look. The structure perversely complements the golden-filled, clear, curvaceous glass bottles with gold and maroon labels and gold-tone foil. Just 50 copies of the design were produced by Christofle in its France-based Haute Orfevrerie workshop.

You might appreciate that marketing your brand at Art Basel Miami Beach is not just a champagne proposition. The German automaker BMW has been doing it for years, providing a stylish shuttle service fleet.

As for the Champagne Ruinart, the sparkly wine maker's involvement with art is hardly ad hoc. As you may already know, the Art Basel Miami Beach inception to actualization. The ice bucket project was carefully planned over a process that took nine months to perfect. Since Art Basel is an annual event, and the company seeks to collaborate with different artists each time. These collaborations typically run for two years prior to the event, from hese collaborations typically run for two years prior to the event, from inception to actualization. The ice bucket project was carefully planned over a process that took nine months to perfect.

Nicolas Ricroque, Ruinart's US brand director, says that Ruinart has been involved with the arts for almost 300 years. Ricroque states that Dom Ruinart was an art expert among other things, and that since his time, the family has been avidly and passionately collecting art.

Art Collector's Lounge at Art Basel Miami Beach is a venue in Miami and event space Miami. Among venues in Miami, it ranks with art patrons alongside The Miami Art Museum as the largest art show in the world. You are cordially invited, and if you cannot attend, consider toasting us with Ruinart.

Making Launch Parties Successful

A launch party for your product or company is a great way to market your brand and introduce it to the masses. Launch parties should be planned well in advance in order to be produced and promoted effectively. A marketing manager or event planner should come up with the perfect plan to attract people to the event, and make sure that they leave the event with a great experience with the brand.

Last night, NBA players from around the nation attended a launch party in Hollywood to celebrate the launch of video game NBA 2K14 for PlayStation 4.

Sticking to a theme

Sticking to a theme is very important for it makes the whole arrangement and planning an easier job to handle. It can be quite drastic for an attendee to end up in a party that has no pattern and is perhaps an invention of the planner’s imagination. This can create a total stressful environment for people. For successful planning of launch parties it is imperative to cater to every last detail from small decoration to lighting, everything.

Make people feel special

This is the most vital and difficult part while you are set to launch parties for after all it is a people’s event. This means you need to step out of the way to make people comfortable and taken care of so that they have the feel of something important happening in that area. For instance, choosing column lighting over normal one can perfectly blend with your theme. This is because with column lighting you can create the right setting that can go beyond the wee details liberating you from all form of worries.

Seating arrangement

This is nevertheless an important part of all guest events. Planning here once again is of significance for you need to consider well before the time as to who should be seated next to whom. With normal folks it’s all about sitting with friends and family on the other hand VIPs need to be taken care of in a different manner.

In order to endorse a more interactive party, it’s always a good idea to have circular tables. This facilitates better communication among people which is an essential part about your product launch. These tables can be easily arranged for and worked upon.

For those who are trying their hands on launch parties for the very first time, it is advised to start on a small scale. This is a sensible precaution and some 150 to 200 people should be enough. This is because a small space would give you a better incentive to implement your ideas and a small venue packed with 150 people would give you the optimum result. Hence, starting small would give you the room to experiment and make your niche alongside.

On the whole, launch parties are a dramatic way to introduce products, brands and services. These events give the consumers and clients to interact better with the suppliers and get eager for the new endeavor. Launching any party can appear to be an overwhelming but it can be managed perfectly well if the task is broken into fragments and you are able to assign them to responsible and equally energetic people like you.

Experiential Marketing-What is the Complete Picture?

For any business owner and a marketer there are many forms of marketing to choose from. Among this league lays experiential marketing that strays out from the customary form of marketing. This is because it promotes and endorses a two way communication process by physical means with the brand itself. This basic difference can be a major one especially in terms of establishing campaign where the involvement with a consumer is on a more personal level.

Experiential Marketing in Action –

To promote the new Lexus IS Hybrid the luxury car manufacturer created a campaign called “Trace Your Road” which features a real life video game where 10 lucky Facebook fans got ride in the jump seat with Formula 1 race car driver, Jarno Trulli. Each rider was given an iPad in which they had to draw/follow the racecourse so the iPad would project the racetrack on the floor.

Watch Video Here - Trace Your Road

The incentive that experiential marketing gives to businesses is that it is able to build a more subjective and interactive relationship with brand. This all then further leads to enhanced turnover even when the investment had been a small one.

What this form of marketing offers to agencies is something that is completely different from the ordinary forms of advertising agencies. All the traditional forms of campaign strategies, for instance, the television ad campaigns have been losing their efficacy for there is whole pool of products that are being attended to. The consumer side is continuously being thrown over in this mess who often fail to make the right choice. With experiential marketing the good thing is that it attracts the potential consumer to connect without having to invest or engage with the brand.

So how exactly are businesses benefiting from this marketing strategy?

- Able to create awareness about products and brands

- Building consumer relationships and sustaining loyalties

- Able to form optimistic feedback that spreads through word of mouth

- Creating brand publicity amongst the right target audience

- Eliminating all adverse PR through optimistic support

On the other side, experiential marketing has its own set of limitations. For instance, it is not very often used for large scale campaigning. There are budgetary constraints whereas all international campaigns are very rarely catered. This is because a good majority of large scale campaigns are normally a combination of the customary marketing techniques in order to gain as much as it could with the help of experiential technique.

Events for marketing campaign are a success in places where there are usually a good number of people located or happen to pass by every day. Therefore, to guarantee the success of an ad campaign the precise location is of utmost significance. In addition to this, it is vital to ensure that the staffs are well equipped, friendly and professional in their means.

Times have certainly changed for today the consumers want to be part of the marketing strategy of any company. This means that gone are the days when a single message from a television screen could do the job to hold the interest of a consumer. Going with experiential marketing means this form of marketing can actually come down to the needs and expectation of the customers.

On the last note, an effective experiential strategy would not only come up with operative and practical ideas but should also be able to manage that campaign to the last bit to achieve the aims. All this should need to be managed within the restraints of the budget as well.

The Discovery Channel's Health Tour

The Discovery Channel's Health Tour takes living healthy on the road, and shows kids and their parents how to eat better, exercise more and get in shape. But this tour is not just about getting healthy and exercising your body, it is an exercise in how to properly use experiential marketing to further enhance the message behind your brand.

WATCH VIDEO - The Discovery Channel's Health Tour

Experiential marketing is a form of marketing where companies offer an experience to teach people their message through actions, active learning and exploration of a topic. Instead of just preaching to your customers, why not let them take part in it?

The Discover Channel does an excellent job of this by teaching valuable lessons in a fun, and entertaining way. Their Health Tour is a fun experience that teaches a valuable message. The event draws lots of people to it as well. With a highly visible trailer and RV, several interactive learning games and exhibits like the Bacteria Basher game, fun health tips, an operation game exhibit, and competitions to inspire involvement, it's impossible not to get involved.

The message is delivered in this event, as it is in many others. Companies are exploring more ways to improve their brands and centralize themselves as a major focus in today's most controversial and powerful messages like getting healthy, and staying active.

How does your company do this?

First, find a good central message and create an event people take part in like a competition, series of exhibits, or games.

Find somewhere to host your event as well. If you want something outdoors, find a space in a sunny, exciting and high-profile area, like a venue in Miami.

Partner with a leader in event space for experiential marketing. One is Soho Studios Miami. They offer event space in Miami for top industry clients and will help your business create a competitive, fun and engaging experiential marketing event.

How Experiential Marketing Can Amp Your Company's Brand

Consumers have become wiser and fussier than ever, thus becoming a huge challenge for marketers and advertisers. This is where experiential marketing comes into the picture. This is based on the idea that loyalty originates from face-to-face interactions.

Watch Video - Ocean Spray's Cranberry Bogs

If you are planning to venture into experiential marketing in Florida, you should hold your next event at Soho Studios. This is the perfect place for venues in Miami and nearby areas that aim to bring brands to life using non-traditional advertising methods. As a part of the business world, special marketing techniques can help you grow your brand such as what happened with Ocean Spray:

In experiential marketing, you go out of the box. Ocean Spray recalls that cranberries are mainly used to offset flavorful dishes during Thanksgiving dinners. After that, the cranberries are often forgotten except as juice. Ocean Spray has created a story that engaged the audience and captured their attention even though it was just about the cranberries.

Experiential marketing is about garnering buzz and attention. Ocean Spray not just caught attention with their cranberry story but they topped everything off by building a cranberry bog in New York. You can incorporate absurdity and stunts you’re your own marketing which can include flash mobs and theatrical accounts will amuse the crowd. Soho Studios has 70,000 square feet as event space Miami – more than enough to hold a huge crowd and your surprising number.

If you have watched any of the viral videos of Ocean Spray such as this, you will find that they effectively encourage you to watch them several times. They fit the definition of viral videos from Wikipedia as they explode with entertainment value.

Whether you intend to bring out professional actors, awe-inspiring costumes, or use the same strategy as Ocean Spray, you need the right platform for your event. Consider Soho Studios where big events in Florida get the audience talking about the surroundings and of course, your brand.