Tag: event activation

How Peroni And Mountain Dew Used VR To Spice Up Branded Events

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Two beverage brands are using virtual reality to create unique on-site experiences and spice up their respective promotional events. Peroni is opening an experimental pop-up bar in London, where the Italian lager brewers invited attendees to try drawing in 3-dimension with Google’s VR app Tilt Brush after a drink or two. Similarly, Mountain Dew is putting together a free, two-day music festival called “Label Motel” in the Musicland Hotel in Palm Springs next week to promote its new Mtn Dew products. The event includes a VR experience that puts participants in a lounge party on an airplane, who will then be dropped out of the VR plane “as the beat drops.”

What Brands Need To Do
Those two brands are the latest examples in the growing list of brands that are starting to incorporate it into the production of branded content and events to deliver engaging and immersive customer experiences. As more mainstream tech and media companies rush into VR to capitalize on the booming popularity of the emerging medium, brands that wish to stay ahead of the curve should start developing VR content that truly enhances brand messaging and contributes to the campaign objectives.

How We Can Help
Our dedicated team of VR experts is here to guide marketers through the distribution landscape. We work closely with brands to develop sustainable VR content strategies to promote branded VR and 360 video content across various apps and platforms. With our proprietary technology stack powered by a combination of best-in-class VR partners and backed by the media fire-power of IPG Mediabrands, we offer customized solutions for distributing and measuring branded VR content that truly enhance brand messaging and contribute to the campaign objectives.

The Lab currently has several VR headsets, including a PlayStation VR, an Oculus Rift, an HTC Vive, and a Google Daydream, all ready for demos. Virtual reality is something that has to be experienced to be understood, so come by the Lab and ask for a VR demo to get a hands-on experience and figure out how your brand can use it to excite and engage with consumers.

 

Source: Marketing Dive & PSFK

Header image courtesy of  Mountain Dew’s YouTube

Live Nation Helps Brand Sponsors Find Social Influencers Among Concert-Goers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Live Nation is leveraging Wi-FI and geofencing at event venues to help brands discover social influencers at concerts in real time. For example, one unspecified brand sponsor recently used Live Nation’s program to scout female fans with over 5,000 Twitter followers at the Music Midtown festival in Atlanta. Those selected were invited via social media to a branded selfie photo area that also doubled as a VIP viewing area.

With a multi-year partnership with IT solution provider Cisco, Live Nation is implementing strong Wi-Fi connectivity at ten of its venues with 20 more planned for 2017, which will provide free Wi-Fi service to event attendees while also enable it to gather real-time data on attendees that can be useful for optimizing the event experience, venue operation, and ad targeting.

What Brands Should Do
This example showcases a new development in influencer recruitment that brands may incorporate in their fan marketing strategies. Leveraging smartphones and social media as touchpoints to reach targeted consumers in venues brings a digital dimension to event-based marketing, and the data this program gathers can also be used for future marketing and retargeting purposes. More brands sponsoring Live Nation events should explore such capabilities to amplify their brand messages in real time.

 

Source: AdAge

What Brands Can Learn From Thursday’s Star War Event

Posted on by Lab Team

The “Star Wars Celebration”, a four-day event in Anaheim, kicked off Thursday with a special presentation featuring the first official trailer for the upcoming movie. Although fans waited for days to attend in person, the event was also live-streamed to viewers in 23 countries. This is a great example of a brand turning content into a live, must-see event, and marketers should take note:

Target “Tribes” And Foster “Fandoms”

In an increasingly fragmented media world, brands must do all they can to motivate their fan base. Encouraging fans to contribute and co-create the narrative is one great way to add to the fuel of the community: the presentation included appearances by long-time fans Lee Towersey and Oliver Steeples, who got hired to build the new R2-D2 robot after displaying their own version at a convention. Although not every brand has a hardcore fan base like the Star Wars franchise, brands can still foster the community by providing unique experiences and rewards, like the pizza provided by the organizers.  

Live Is A Double-Edged Sword

Live events are “must see” and generate a lot of buzz, but by their nature, can’t cover up flubs, so brands will need to become adept at putting together high-production value events. Apple events are famously honed to near perfection (minus the infamous live-streaming snafu from last September). At the same time, with the rise of Meerkat and Periscope, consumers are now able to contribute to the hype by live-streaming events from their mobile devices, which won’t always be in the brand’s control. Marketers must consider when and how it’s appropriate for their brand to incorporate live content.

Build Event Around Content To Spread The Word

Though today’s event was ostensibly around the trailer, which itself was only 1 minute and 40 seconds long, Disney was able to build it into an hour-long event by bringing in pictures, actors, and props. Special hashtags and Twitter emojis were introduced beforehand to help build social buzz, and tweet-worthy moments were also planned to prompt social sharing, such as the surprising return of the BB8 robot, and a special moment for the audience to take pictures of the main cast, crew, and storm troopers on stage. In short, turn content into an event in order to create more content that lives beyond the event itself.

Head image courtesy of www.starwarscelebration.com