B-to-C Events

In the first 10 minutes on the high street in Sturgis, SD, for the 72nd Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Aug. 6 to 12, I met a man from Ohio, who had ridden across more than 1,000 miles to be there. We strolled together into the Loud American Roadhouse, ordered a whisky for him and a beer for me, and we talked for a while. He was in his late 30s, divorced and fairly new to motorcycling. He got his first bike about 10 years ago, he said. It turned out that he’d recently sold a profitable carpentry business, and was about to start a high-end custom cabinetry shop.

Last week, in the brand’s first foray into experiential marketing, employment site TheLadders hosted more than 3,000 hungry job seekers at New York City’s Grand Central Terminal to give them help searching for their next employment opportunity. The event was a one-day only opportunity dubbed Job Central. The brand invited members from New York and surrounding areas, and had more than 4,300 RSVPs from current members and those who heard about the event through word of mouth.

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.

There is always an element of risk when it comes to launching a new event program. But it can often be even more challenging to build on the success of that program’s first few years. Sure, it’s going great, but which parts of the activation should be expanded in the coming year to gain maximum ROI? Which metrics do you look for to gauge where to grow and where to go? And what strategies should you embed in your program to help you assess how to make the next iteration even more successful?