Sandra O’Loughlin

GMC is back on tour promoting its vehicles and its Home Life experiential marketing platform at Home & Garden and Boat shows around the country. Its first stop this year was the Atlanta Boat Show, which took place in mid-January. Next up is Cleveland at the Great Big Home and Garden Show on Feb. 2. GMC's Home Life tour will make 11 stops this year.

Walgreens will take its Up Market: Fresh mobile tour to Super Bowl Boulevard, the four-day experience leading up to the big game on Feb. 3 in New Orleans, where it will engage football fans with interactive games and a taste of its new fresh-made juices, smoothies, low-fat frozen yogurt and coffees. The stop is the latest in the mobile tour, which launched in Chicago in October and is designed to raise awareness of the store’s fresh food offerings as it seeks to expand beyond its traditional drugstore format with convenient and healthy options for shoppers.

To generate awareness and excitement for its new Jamba Kids Meals, the Jamba Juice smoothie chain on Jan. 4 marched 70 “bananas” through the streets of New York City. Jamba’s colorful Banana Man brand personifier led the procession followed by Strawberry Girl and other fruit troupers.

Many mobile tours are kind of like speed daters. They try to make the most impressions on the most people in the quickest amount of time, then move on. Stonyfield’s Know Your Food mobile tour, however, this summer took a different approach. Its strategy involved fewer markets but sticking around for two or three weeks rather than packing up after a day or two. It reached less people but connected with them more often, supplementing activations at large fairs and festivals with retail events, grassroots marketing and guerrilla sampling at each stop.

Premium single malt scotch whisky brand The Glenlivet in mid-December gathered its most loyal advocates, which it calls The Glenlivet Guardians, for a photography event in Brooklyn’s artsy DUMBO neighborhood. The program was part of its Dram and Discover series, which launched in the fall and will continue through the spring of 2013. The events are designed to deepen relationships with The Glenlivet drinkers through experiences that tap into their passions and interests.