One of the greatest ways to spread the word about your brand’s benefits is in a public setting. It could be a trade show or farmer’s market. You might prefer a more personalized touch of a pop-up or mobile tour. Whatever your goals, you need to be unique if you’re going to stand out. Here are five companies that came up with unique event marketing ideas to ensure consumers won’t forget them.

Budweiser’s Sensory Factory Tour

Budweiser used a very popular music festival to market its beers. To do so, the company tapped into the senses focusing on smell, touch, taste, sound, and sight.

To tour a Budweiser factory, people often have to travel to Colorado, Missouri, or New Hampshire. For those in the south, those locations aren’t always convenient. At the SXSW festival in 2016, Budweiser brought the factory to them.

The beer company set up a garage complete with taps, beers, snacks, and a virtual reality tour of their breweries. Interested guests donned virtual reality headsets and walked around the brewery receiving a virtual tour. To heighten the experience, the guests were blasted with cold air in the refrigeration areas, heat in the boiling rooms. To further make the experience unforgettable, the guests also smelled hops as they reached the hops room part of the virtual tour. At the end of the virtual tour, they were handed a cup of beer to sample.

HBO’s Escape Rooms

Escape rooms have become the rage in most states. They’re so popular the TV show Bob’s Burger did an episode about one, and there have been books and movies focusing on them. HBO used that to its advantage during its 2017 event marketing campaign at SXSW. Not only did HBO use the music festival to its benefit, but it also drew interested participants into carefully designed sets they wouldn’t forget.

To really create an unforgettable experience, HBO set up three escape rooms. Each one was designed after one of the company’s popular TV series: Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, and Veep. Attendees had the chance to experience each show on a personal level by deducing clues and figuring out how to escape each room.

Old Navy’s Tweet the Feet

To market the yearly $1 flip-flop sale in 2014, Old Navy set up pop-up vending machines filled with the popular summer shoes. These pop-ups were paired with a social media campaign designed to share news of the upcoming sale.

Instead of having to buy the shoes from the machine, people could use the machine’s display to share their favorite summer vacation spot. They highlighted areas where the flip-flops were the perfect choice of footwear. In return, participants got a pair of shoes for free.

By the end of the Tweet the Feet campaign, Old Navy had thousands of tweets and 12 million social media impressions. Major magazines like Forbes also featured the campaign in articles.

The Piano Stairs

Sometimes, your marketing campaign can capture an emotion rather than what your product or service is for. Volkswagen proved this with an event marketing campaign. Because the car company wants people to associate Volkswagen cars with “fun,” the team turned a regular subway staircase into an interactive piano.

This piano played music as people went up and down the steps. While there was an escalator adjacent to the staircase, almost 7 out of 10 people in the subway used the stairs just to have fun. Volkswagen tied this experience into a contest where consumers could share videos of other ways to have fun.

The Pub Ownership Experience

St. Patrick’s Day is associated with socialization and drinking with friends followed by a meal of corned beef and cabbage. In celebration, Guinness and Tourism Ireland came up with an interesting twist on a St. Patrick’s Day event.

Beer drinkers were encouraged to snap photos of themselves enjoying a pint and share it with the tags “GuinnessGetTogether and #Contest. That boosted social media exposure. In return, those who did were entered into a contest. What was the prize? A trip to Ireland where the winner got to run a pub for a week with the help of a Guinness expert, DJ, and chef.

What Message Do You Want to Share?

Factory 360 specializes in creating experiences that draw consumers to your brand. Whether you love the idea of an event or feel a different technique might be ideal, we’re ready to help. In addition to helping with events or pop-ups, we can help you with your social media marketing and your brand’s overall design. Let us know how we can help. Reach our offices in New York or San Francisco by calling 212-242-2417.