Kenneth Briodagh

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you haven’t. This is especially true in the world of mobile apps—those downloads you can drop on your Smartphone that do just about everything from turn off the lights in your kitchen from halfway around the world to track down the name of a favorite song just by holding the phone to the music. Just as limitless are the ways event marketers can use live experiences to drive downloads, boost engagement and leverage the service-based nature of apps to keep your brand top of mind and consumers engaged long after the event is over.

When Crest and Oral-B launched the new 3D White Collection, a suite of whitening products that includes Professional Effects Whitestrips, Vivid Toothpaste, MultiCare Whitening Rinse and the Oral-B Pulsar Advanced Vivid Toothbrush, the companies decided that a plain old two-dimensional red carpet event wasn’t good enough. So they went to artist Julian Beever, who created a 3D “White Carpet” in New York City’s Herald Square on April 6.

Everyone has seen the virtual event lobby, right? There’s usually a rendering of a modern-looking conference center peppered with animated people standing around talking to one another. And there’s either a video or a central image of a person that acts as a concierge ready to instruct attendees on how to navigate around the environment. Well, that kind of cookie-cutter virtual experience won’t be greeting your attendees for long. Totally customizable environments are just one of four major innovations rocking the world of virtual events this year.

Much like Vancouver’s ski slopes, Coca-Cola went ultra-green at this year’s Olympic Games. As the longest-standing Olympic sponsor on the roster, this year Coke committed to executing a completely carbon-neutral event presence, and according to inhouse estimates, the beverage giant succeeded. The initiative was part of the Vancouver Olympic Committee’s (VANOC’s) Vancouver 2010 Sustainability Star program. The program recognizes initiatives by Games partners, sponsors and VANOC that demonstrate positive and measurable social, economic and environmental benefits.

In our new regular series, EM revisits old event marketing trends to find out where they’ve gone since we first reported on them. Are they old hats and has-beens? Or is that past up-and-comer a future best practice that’s now an industry standard? In this installment, we focus on interactive touch screens, which we first examined in October 2006.