B-to-C Events

Snyder’s of Hanover, a more than 100-year-old pretzel brand, leveraged National Pretzel Day on April 26 by hosting a series of sampling activations at events nationwide designed to introduce large audiences to the array of flavors the crunchy snack has to offer. Snyder’s National Pretzel Day celebrations took place at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia (the world’s largest track and field meet), at the Bicentennial Plaza at Inner Harbor in Baltimore, at Fountain Square in Cincinnati, at the Minnesota Twins game at Target Field in Minneapolis, and at the San Diego Zoo.

L’Oreal Paris is traveling the country with a mobile luxury hair salon to raise awareness for its new Advanced Haircare line of products. Attendees receive hair washes with L’Oreal products, samples and personalized consultations with stylists trained in hair analysis.

adidas’s new Boost running shoe boasts special foam cushioning that is designed to better absorb and return energy to the wearer, resulting in more efficient strides. To illustrate this concept, the brand at the International Santiago Marathon in Chile on April 7 “harvested footsteps” (with kinetic energy-absorbing tiles) and used the stored energy to give runners a “boost” toward the end of the 42K race—in the form of motivational messages projected on a big screen.

Think large-scale mass marketing and small-scale targeted tastemaker strategies don’t mix? Grab a cold one and think again, Sparky. Anheuser-Busch Inbev this February proved that you can simultaneously go big and execute small to generate just the right blend of mass awareness and influencer appeal.

Muscle Milk in Canada this spring is deploying teams of brand ambassadors at sporting events all across the Great White North. These Protein trainers, as the brand calls them, are tasked with educating Canadian sports fans and athletes about the benefits of a protein-rich diet and handing out samples of the brand’s protein-rich bottled Muscle Milk drinks from branded Volkswagen Toureg SUVs. The brand has teams operating at events all over Calgary, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, and hopes to use the program to expand awareness.