Category: Experiential Marketing

Mother’s Day Experiential Marketing Campaign Ideas For 2023

Posted on by Claudia

When many of your consumers are Mothers, they deserve to be celebrated in a bigger, better, and more beautiful way than your competitors. That’s why Mother’s Day is the perfect opportunity to turn to experiential marketing. 

Whatever your industry, Mother’s Day experiential marketing campaigns are the perfect way to complement a larger marketing strategy (social media, email marketing, TV commercials, online promos etc.) by creating a true emotional connection with your female demographic.

If experiential marketing is out of your wheelhouse, don’t worry. Our team of experts knows exactly how to help your brand stand out from the crowd.

Here are five creative ideas for your Mother’s Day campaign that are sure to strengthen brand-to-consumer relationships and forge new ones. Let’s get started! 

1. HAND OUT FLOWER BOUQUETS

Nothing screams ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ like a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

A flower giveaway is a thoughtful way your brand can show appreciation for its women’s customer base while acquiring new consumers.

For example, take last year’s ShopRunner and Coach collab. Last May, the brands teamed up and put on a Mother’s Day promotion to #GiftMomBack giving out free, branded flower bouquets from a mobile pop-up in Soho. To ensure this promo directly benefited the ShopRunner brand, there were QR codes designed onto the pop-up shop itself, brand ambassadors’ necklaces, and bounce-back cards that sent people to sign up for the ShopRunner app in real-time.

Over three days, this Mother’s Day campaign resulted in more than 2,500 subscriptions for the ShopRunner app, showing how far a bouquet can go with consumers.

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2. INTERACTIVE CHALKBOARD EXPERIENCE with photo-ops

Mother’s Day is all about telling moms ‘I love you,’ so why not let people write why they love their moms so much on a chalkboard outside your pop-up shop? Tia did something similar to celebrate the opening of their Santa Monica office with the glass board depicted below.

Allowing your consumers to interact with one another, and your brand, through thoughtful messages is a great way to play on the Mother’s Day spirit. This drives positive brand associations that will make a long-lasting impact on business success. You can even prompt the board with questions like, “What’s your favorite memory with your mom?” or “Why is your mom the best?” to get the conversation going.

A little girl using marker to write on a glass board at Tia's pop-up

3. BRAND A MARKETING VEHICLE IN FEMININE COLORS ASSOCIATED WITH MOTHER'S DAY

Marketing vehicles are extremely effective for driving business goals. From food carts to glass trucks, experiential vehicles are known to be very adaptable and can be customized to meet many different needs.

When it comes to Mother’s Day, your brand can exude the feminine spirit by flaunting an eye-catching mobile billboard, showroom, pop-up shop, etc. in fitting colors. 

How you choose to design your vinyl is entirely up to you, leaving a lot of room for creativity and connection with your audience! 

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4. GIVE OUT FREE COFFEE AND A BRANDED TOTE

What busy moms need more than anything else are a cup of coffee and a bag to keep them energized and on-the-go. This Mother’s Day, you can be the brand that helps moms do it all by handing out complimentary coffee and branded totes.

These gifted items are a straightforward, low-cost way of connecting with your women target audience during a special time of the year. To make certain that your brand will benefit from this promo, you can even incorporate a call-to-action where consumers are asked to sign up for email subscriptions or download your app in order to receive the free goodies! 

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5. PROFESSIONAL MAKEOVER USING YOUR BEAUTY PRODUCTS

If you’re a beauty or skincare brand, your target audience is largely women, making Mother’s Day a prime opportunity to drive brand awareness, host a product launch, or acquire new customers through a unique experiential marketing campaign.

One way you can accomplish these goals is by allowing consumers to sample your beauty products with a professional makeover! 

For instance, when e.l.f. Cosmetics wanted to shed a light on their Halo Glow Liquid Filter, they hosted a mobile pop-up shop in Soho where consumers could line up to get their makeup done by celebrity Lea Michele or professional makeup artists from the e.l.f. team.

This interactive element goes a long way compared to just free samples to-go. So, if you’re marketing a skincare or beauty line, you should definitely consider a way to incorporate an educational, interpersonal consumer experience into your Mother’s Day promotion.

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TIME TO SPREAD THE LOVE THIS MOTHER'S DAY

It’s time to get the ball rolling on your Mother’s Day experiential marketing campaign. No matter your market, the five ideas we listed are surefire ways of leveraging this holiday to create emotional connections with your women consumers. 

Interested in seeing what else our agency can do for you? Reach out today and start spreading the Mother’s Day love!

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Why Brands Need An Experiential Marketing Budget

Posted on by Claudia

The race to attract eyeballs on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok has resulted in a digital space that is too crowded, creating a genuine cause for concern for companies using social media as their core marketing channel. 

With the over-saturation in the digital space, your company needs to make a shift: in 2023, in order to keep up with consumer trends, convert high ROIs, and leave a lasting, positive impact on consumer behavior, your company needs a sizable experiential marketing budget. 

Experiential marketing through brand activations like pop-up shops, mobile marketing tours, showrooms, and sampling events are shown to leave a lasting, positive impact on consumers. In this blog, we’ll dive into the details of why an experiential marketing budget is right for you.

Loungefly's Polka Dot Pop-Up

Where Digital Marketing Efforts Fail

Before outlining the benefits of in-person experiential marketing, it’s worth taking a look at the pitfalls of digital marketing efforts. Here are some quick stats that paint the picture: 

Now more than ever, your consumers are attuned to what an ad looks like and what it wants to sell them, and that drives them away.

The Positive Impact of Experiential Marketing on Consumers

On the flip side, experiential marketing has been a significant predictor of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. While marketers have been led to believe that social media may be the best way to communicate with their target audience, face-to-face, experience-based marketing has proven to be more effective. Yes, that goes even for Gen Z.  

  • 40% of consumers said they felt more brand loyalty after participating in a brand experience or interaction.
  • 91% of consumers that were targeted via experiential marketing were more likely to purchase the product or service. 
  • Marketers who have incorporated experiential marketing report a 56% increase in leads. 
  • 47% of brands report an ROI of between 3:1 And 5:1 via brand activations. 

Successful Experiential Marketing By Small, Mid-Size, and Large Brands

The size of experiential marketing budgets vary across companies; however, brand activations can be done at any level, in any industry, and with any budget. Here are a few examples of different companies that were able to implement experiential marketing in different ways! 

#FollowMyScent to Costa Brazil

Costa Brazil is a new, up-and-coming beauty line. To announce the opening of their Soho store, the brand strategically placed a marketing vehicle on the corner that offered New Yorkers a free spray of their fragrance and complimentary coffee. More importantly, guests were offered a bounce-back card that led them to the in-store pop-up just a few yards away, using the #FollowMyScent tagline. 

The pop-up café, was a nice touch to a more dynamic pop-up happening in-store, getting consumers excited about a new scent in New York. 

The pop-up café, as well as the sidewalk graffiti, was a nice touch to a more dynamic pop-up happening in-store, ultimately getting consumers excited about a new scent in New York. 

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Tea on Tia Campaign

Tia celebrated the grand opening of their office in Santa Monica with their aptly named “Tea on Tia” campaign, a pop-up cafe that hit Santa Monica, Playa Vista, and Brentwood to treat women to complimentary matcha latté from Sachi.LA, learn more about Tia’s innovative care model, and take home a Tia tote bag.

This experiential marketing activation gave potential patients a new, more personal perspective on the health network with a face-to-face experience that inspired trust between the brand and consumers. 

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Laneige Water Bank Hydration School

To promote two of their products, their Water Bank Hydration Collection and the Lip Sleeping Mask, Laneige transformed a double-decker bus into a dynamic beauty pop-up experience, treating guests to an educational product sampling, prizes, and photo-ops. Each of these elements seamed together to successfully spread brand awareness and drive up sales in NYC! 

Don't Wait to Get Started with Experiential Marketing

Regardless of your company size or industry, experiential marketing is a go-to strategy in 2023. While other companies double-down on digital marketing efforts, you can be the brand that stands and better appeals to consumers’ emotions with in-person brand activations. 

Feeling inspired? Reach out to our team today! We can help create memorable pop-ups, showrooms, guerrilla marketing campaigns, and more with an experiential marketing budget that is right for you.

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Five Reasons For A SXSW Brand Activation In 2023

Posted on by Claudia

South by Southwest, or SXSW, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, music festivals and conferences in Austin, Texas. Over ten days, thousands of people gather from all over the world and enjoy the exciting events that the city has to offer, from listening to keynote speakers to hanging out in experiential lounges.

Even if your company isn’t making a formal appearance at South By Southwest, the event offers a prime marketing opportunity; in fact, there are five main reasons your company should put on a SXSW brand activation in 2023. Find out what they are below.

SXSW logo

1. Large Audience At Your Brand's Fingertips

South By Southwest attracts a total of 40,000 in-person attendees, which is a massive plus side of leveraging the event. When that many people are at your fingertips, an interactive brand activation goes an extremely long way. 

For instance, the photos below are from Peacock’s mobile pop-up shop at SXSW 2022. In order to promote the TV series Rutherford Falls, the company partnered with Food Truck Promotions to hand out Cathy’s Fry Bread from the show to passerbyers and event attendees. This simple yet creative way of bringing a feature from the series to life inspired thousands of new viewers to check out the TV show. This is exactly what can be accomplished when you interact directly with thousands of people. 

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2. The Opportunity To Piggyback Off Of The Festival Hype

It’s not just the sheer size of SXSW that makes the event a perfect marketing avenue; it’s also the hype that already exists around the series of events. Having the ability to “piggyback” off of excitement is part of the reason that festival marketing comes in handy in general, especially when it comes to SXSW. 

SXSW appeals to so many different people, and because it’s an annual event, the anticipation builds over 365 days, providing the ultimate hype for your company to capitalize on for its own SXSW brand activation. 

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3. Gaining Natural Media Coverage

One of the greatest marketing advantages of events like SXSW is the natural media coverage they receive. Attendees don’t just enjoy events in-person; they share their experiences online and on social media. This means that if you are able to provide a brand experience that resonates with people, you have the potential to also connect with thousands- if not millions- of people through organic digital exposure. 

Not to mention, there are over 2,000 journalists and photographers from legitimate media outlets that cover the event, and even ones that specifically highlight the best brand activations that took place! 

4. Reaching A Diverse Demographic

SXSW attracts a demographic as diverse at is large, with over 50 countries represented at the different expos and meet ups. Not to mention, SXSW attendees represent a whole range of age groups, so no matter the industry you’re in, you will likely have the opportunity to engage with your target audience. 

It should come as no surprise that being able to connect with such an expansive audience has massive benefits. 

5. More Meaningful Connection With Consumers

Last but not least, SXSW brand activations are so beneficial because they are higher quality ways of engaging with consumers. As opposed to digital or content marketing, experiential marketing and in-person brand activations are able to create more meaningful connections with consumers because they are more sensory, interpersonal, and emotional experiences. 

So, as you brainstorm your marketing strategy and think about ways that you can gain longterm consumer loyalty, remember the power of brand activations. 

Your SXSW Brand Activation

SXSW events make the perfect marketing opportunities. This year, when the entire city of Austin, Texas is filled with consumers from all over the country (and even the world), make sure that your brand is benefitting as much as possible with an in-person marketing stunt or brand activation that communicates your company’s message to thousands of people, face-to-face.

Enlist in the help of the professionals here at FTP – we’ll make sure your SXSW brand activation is a hit! Contact us to get started!

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Tap Into a New Generation of Consumers with College Brand Activations

Posted on by Claudia

As a brand, reaching a younger demographic can be challenging; especially when it comes to Gen Z, it feels like the trends are always changing, and just like that, what was ‘in’ yesterday is ‘out’ today. 

While marketing your brand to this age range can be tricky, there’s no understating how crucial this line of communication ultimately is: Gen Z is the new generation of consumers and the people who shape so much of our culture, thereby playing a considerable role in the success– or decline– of your business. 

The fact of this may seem intimidating, but here’s the good news: in the same quest to tap into this demo, many companies have already discovered that the best way to communicate with Gen Z is through brand activations on (or around) college campuses. 

In the world of marketing, an overwhelming consensus has been reached: Gen Z craves experiential marketing. Now it’s up to you to leverage this discovery to your business’s advantage. 

In this blog, we will go into greater depth about why, exactly, experiential marketing and in-person brand activations resonate so well with this target audience, especially when they take place on college towns and campuses. We’ll also highlight different college marketing examples that have truly connected with this new generation of consumers. 

By doing both, our hope is that you leave feeling inspired to create face-to-face, experiential marketing activations of your own. Let’s get started.

University of Wisconsin Bascom Hill

Why College Marketing is A Smart Move For Your Brand

Experiential marketing is an effective marketing strategy to implement across all industries and for a wide range of demographics— with that being said, face-to-face, experience-based marketing is especially effective when your goal is to grab the attention of college students. 

People in their late teens and early twenties tend to be more open-minded and malleable, making them the perfect group of consumers to get on your brand’s side. And, where better to find college students than around college campuses? 

Because people of this age group tend to embrace new brands and experiences, it’s during these four years of college when so many of us form our opinions and perceptions of the world. So, if you’re able to resonate with this audience during these informative years, you’re positioning yourself for a very successful future. 

Experiential Marketing Over Social Media Marketing? Really, Why?

Does the fact that college students favor in-person brand activations to hefty social media campaigns feel counterintuitive? You’re not alone. Over recent years, many marketing departments have made the same mistake under the same assumption that because Gen Z grows up around the Internet and social media, digital marketing is the best way to connect with them. 

However, what has resulted from this collective shift to social media marketing is an extreme saturation in the digital space. Look through your own lens: when was the last time you were happy to be interrupted from a video or feed by an ad? 

Gen Z is online the most, and this has two complex implications: you want to have an online presence where so many eyeballs are, but you don’t want to bombard them with obvious and overdone selling tactics. Experiential marketing can walk the tight-rope, and here’s why:

Experiential marketing isn’t the antithesis of social media marketing. In fact, what brand activations, pop-ups, mobile tours, lounges, and other immersive brand experiences do so well is that they create moments that are as fun to share online as they are to enjoy ‘IRL.’

Gen-Z and Millennials love events and experiences that they can capture content from and show off on their social media platforms, so brand activations on college campuses give you organic exposure online that goes way further than overtly promotional content. 

College Brand Activations That Made A Lasting Statement

Now that we’ve laid out the benefits of experiential marketing and college brand activations, here are a few instances of college marketing that forged lasting connections with consumers. When thinking about your own marketing ideas, feel free to draw inspo from these success stories! 

Bondi Sands "Tan Van"

Bondi Sands is an Australian beauty brand that captures the light and breezy Aussie lifestyle in their everyday products. To drive greater awareness around their 1 Hour Self-Tanning Foam in a college-aged demographic, the brand produced a food truck experience known as the ‘Tan Van’ on the corner of West Fourth St and Broadway, strategically near New York University. 

The branded experience was straight-forward, creative, and interpersonal: qualities that Gen Z values. On their way to class, NYU students had their attention caught by a branded food truck that read “Free Self Tan and Coffee,” and once they were intrigued, a friendly Bondi Sands brand ambassador would greet them, guide them to scan the QR code, sign up for the loyalty program to receive their free sample bottle and application mitt to take home. 

This quick-and-easy college brand activation was the perfect way to leave a brand impression as lasting as the tan on this target audience. 

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Gerry's Partisan Pizza Tour

RepresentUS used a similar marketing tactic to accomplish their own goals. A non-profit, non-partisan organization, RepresentUS wanted to create an educational experience around the unjust practice of gerrymandering that could be enjoyed by college students, a demographic that is forming its own opinions and feelings towards the government in real-time.

This is how The Gerry’s Partisan Pizza mobile tour was born. The concept of this multi-city marketing campaign was to make the concept of gerrymandering better understood through a visual (and edible) representation. To do this, RepresentUS drove a branded food truck to different college towns across the country and educated people about the importance of fairly segmented voting districts with pizza that was unevenly cut. The idea was to make the pizza an educational snack that bolstered the keynote speakers’ message and overall branding of the truck.

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Schmooze

For a brand like Schmooze, college marketing is a no-brainer. Schmooze is a dating app that’s motto is to “swipe memes, not people.” Unlike other dating sites, the idea behind Schmooze is to connect people based on their sense of humor rather than looks. 

As you can imagine, the main target audience for this app are young, single people in their teens and twenties. So, where better to get people using their app than on college campuses? They took this experiential cart to different schools in the northeast, including MIT, Northeastern, Harvard, and Boston University to communicate the benefits of their app and gain users in real-time. 

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Alpha Foods College Sampling Tour

Last but not least, there’s Alpha Foods. Alpha Foods is a plant-based food line that was looking to communicate a message core to their brand: being a vegan or vegetarian can be delicious when you eat Alpha Foods. What the brand came up with was a product sampling tour that stopped in different college campuses, where the highest concentration of their target audience was (young consumers open to a new way of eating).

They fully customized a food truck and turned it into a product sampling food truck pop-up to create buzz around the brand’s delicious vegan options, visiting seven different college campuses across Los Angeles and New York including NYU, Cornell, Columbia, FIT, Fordham, USC and UCLA. 

This experiential marketing tactic turned out to be the perfect way to get people on board with Alpha Foods’s revolutionary and conscientious way of eating. 

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Take Your Brand to College

If you’re looking for marketing ideas to help you connect with a younger demographic, college marketing should be at the very top of your list. Brand activations allow you to take your brand directly to college campuses, where you are able to piggyback off exciting events within the community like college football, date parties, March Madness, and career fairs— or create excitement of your own. 

College campuses are where so many people form lasting beliefs and connections, which why it’s important for brands to make a concentrated effort to make your presence known in this environment. So while connecting with Gen Z may feel impossible, brand activations offer the perfect solution! 

Here at Food Truck Promotions, we are experts in brand activations. Contact us today to get started creating yours!

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More Than Just Music: Why Your Brand Can’t Miss Coachella

Posted on by Claudia

At its core, Coachella offers nothing more than an experience: every year, a quarter of a million people buy tickets to see their favorite musical artists, enjoy innovative art installations, and bond with a like-minded community in the middle of the Indio desert. Very few music festivals encapsulate so much, which is why over the years, Coachella has become a huge cultural phenomenon and a fashionable hive for trendy people and celebs. 

However, for brands, Coachella represents much more than just pool parties, celebrity sightings, and late-night shows; above all else, the annual music festival is a massive marketing opportunity. Recognizing its marketing potential, every year, companies across all industries leverage Coachella weekend by producing creative brand activations and pop-ups (both on-site and around festival grounds) that immerse consumers as much as the festival itself.

So in light of the recent Coachella lineup release, let’s talk about why music festival marketing is so valuable and, more specifically, why your brand can’t afford to miss out on Coachella 2023. 

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More On Music Festival Marketing And Why A Coachella Pop-Up Is A Must

Across two weekends, a Coachella pop-up puts an astounding 250,000 people at your brand’s fingertips. But beyond just sheer size, it’s important to note that the festival is one of the most coveted and iconic experiences in all of music for fans and artists alike.

The high-regard that people have for Coachella is the less-tangible, yet equally valuable part of marketing your brand at the festival: the way people feel about Coachella translates into how they feel about your brand, resulting in a positive brand association.

And this isn’t just true for Coachella: music festival marketing at large is seen as so valuable because when a festival-goer reminisces on shows from their favorite pop stars like Billie Eilish or DJs like Diplo and Peggy Gou, they’ll also remember other aspects of the festival, like the pop-up from your brand that blew them away.

Among all of the live performances is a true opportunity for your brand to stand out and connect by make your brand a part of something bigger and more meaningful. After all, where better to put sensory marketing to the test than in the multi-sensory mecca that is Coachella?

A Brand Activation To Cause Internet "FOMO"

Plus, here’s even more good news: Coachella isn’t just an in-person event. With the rise of social media, the festival has evolved into a backdrop for an online fashion show and prime Instagram opportunities, while Tik Tok is flooded with influencers’ “Coachella highlights” and “GRWMs” flaunting the trendiest “OOTDs.” 

Why is this relevant for your brand? Well, not only does a Coachella pop-up connect with music festival-goers in real time, but it also gives your brand the potential to reach millions of people through organic online exposure.

Because there’s so much natural coverage of the weekend on social media, offering an experience festival-goers enjoy will inevitably put you on the map online. Forget paid ads or pricey influencer deals: producing a brand activation that is worth experiencing and, more, worth sharing, puts your brand in an optimal position for success. In 2023, creating a pop-up that people want to enjoy in-person and brag about online should be your top priority. 

Coachella Pop-Ups We Still Think About

Now that we’ve run through the benefits that music festival marketing has to offer, 

Here’s a list of Coachella pop-ups that were so creative and memorable that they still live rent-free in our heads— these branded experiences are not only some of the best examples of pop-ups at Coachella, but also of music festival marketing at large. 

1. American Express Lounge

American Express used music festival marketing by producing The American Express Lounge at Coachella. This lounge gave card members a space to recharge with various wellness activities— including a crystal bar, astrology readings from Smudge Wellness, and acupressure ear seeding. Guests were also treated to hydration stations, snacks, charging stations, and a cash bar.

American Express Lounge

2. Aston Martin Astoria Activation

Aston Martin and Waldorf Astoria teamed up for a flower-filled brand activation at the La Quinta Resort & Club. The luxury brands also hosted daily DJ performances, specialty cocktails, and a station for complimentary flower crowns and floral arm bands.

3. #MYCALVINS

To celebrate the brand’s spring 2019 line, Calvin Klein’s Coachella brand activation was a multi-sensory experience inspired by a 1970s-style house. Attendees could go through various rooms, including a branded bathroom, a walk-in closet with Calvin Klein clothing, and a bedroom with a mirrored ceiling for a unique photo op. Of course, pictures of people enjoying the experience made its way to social media. 

#MYCALVINS brand activation at Coachella

4. DirectTV

DIRECTV drew attention during the festival with five unique activations. VIP guests could start their evening by visiting DIRECTV’s Neon Oasis, a jungle-themed and branded lounge, before traveling to the carnival ground through DIRECTV’s futuristic Portal. Other experiences included a branded zipper ride and an additional VIP lounge. And throughout the night, the brand’s Geodome illuminated the sky with immersive projection mapping.

Cool Coachella Pop-Up Ideas For Your Brand

There are so many different ways your brand can give festival attendees a break from the dance floor with a different but equally memorable Coachella experience. Here are a few ideas you can implement into a Coachella pop-up or brand activation. 

Product Display Wall

Take Rose Inc’s pop-up in New York City all the way to the desert in California. Whether on a street corner or on festival grounds, product display walls can help consumers fall in love with your skin or beauty product at just a glance.

Rose Inc product display wall

Showroom

Create a mobile showroom that flaunts your clothing line and gives festival-goers a break from the dance floor with some retail therapy. You can even offer free drinks for a pick-me-up! 

Prize Wheel

Seam an interactive prize wheel into your brand activation to offer the public free merch that they can take as a memento of your Coachella pop-up. There are few better ways to ensure your brand experience carries into a consumers’ every day life than with a free prize they can enjoy beyond the weekend.

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Leverage the Coachella Hype with a Pop-Up

Coachella Arts & Music Festival attracts a wide and diverse audience, but among all of the live performances and stand-out art installations, there is tremendous room for your company to create a branded experience that accomplishes the impossible: standing out from competitors in some of the most competitive markets. 

Whether you’re in retail, beauty, finance, or tech, you can successfully leverage the hype around Coachella weekend with a face-to-face experience that compliments the interactive and multi-sensory nature of the festival itself. 

Ready for Coachella? Reach out to our team to learn about the kinds of branded experiences.

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