B-to-C Events

Swedish retailer H&M on March 27 surprised onlookers in San Francisco’s Union Square with a flash mob of 55 dancing kids decked out in jeans and sporty, colorful t-shirts, jackets and dresses from the store’s children’s apparel collection. They engaged in a hip-hop dance battle that lasted four minutes but has garnered thousands of views on YouTube. Bystanders captured the performance on cell phones and cameras and received fliers for 20 percent discounts on kids’ apparel purchases through April 4.

When opening day at the New York Red Bulls Arena soccer stadium in Harrison, NJ rolled around on March 20, fans who flocked (mostly by train) to the game were greeted outside by a brand new all-soccer Fan Zone, designed by Burbank, CA-based Midnight Oil Creative. The team, owned by Austrian energy drink company Red Bull GmbH, has until now played at Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.

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.

When Ohio passed legislation in 2008 to become more energy efficient, utility companies like American Electric Power—one of the largest companies of its type in the country—were tasked with educating residents on how to save energy in their homes and workplaces. The solution was The Home Energy Savings Tour: Featuring gridSmart from AEP Ohio.

Armed with a camera and bags filled with chocolate samples, Ghirardelli street teams are stopping consumers in 10 cities to capture their favorite chocolate “moments” on video and then post them to ghirardellimoments.com.