B-to-C Events

To connect with college kids and promote its Flavors with Benefits campaign, beverage brand SoBe activated at Spring Break hotels, beaches and nightspots with samples and other freebies. The four-week program took place from March through early April at Lake Havasu, AZ, Panama City Beach, FL and South Padre Island, Texas.

BRAND: KIA
AGENCY: EWI Worldwide
CAMPAIGN: Close Encounters of the KIA Kind

In this regular series, EM brings you tips and tricks from pros and experts who’ve been eating social media marketing for breakfast. So eat up, and check us out on Twitter @eventmarketer and Facebook.com/eventmarketer for more.

To build buzz and drive viewership for its new show, “VEEP,” which stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus, HBO took motorcades to three big markets in full vice-presidential style. Each motorcade consisted of two police motorcycles and a black SUV with hood flags flying acting as escort to a branded, wrapped tour bus that visited The Grove shopping mall in Los Angeles, Planet Hollywood in Times Square, NYU Student Center and Bryant Park in New York City and Georgetown in Washington D.C. on April 17.

The New York International Auto Show (NYIAS) returned to Manhattan’s Jacob Javits Convention Center April 6 to 15 with the latest cutting-edge concept cars and road-ready models for 2012. The trend the last few years has been to stand out with technology-heavy interactions, but that wasn’t the case this time around. This year, GM, Lincoln, Toyota and the rest went back to beautiful booth designs to highlight the cars, rather than deploying flashy gadgets that sometimes steal focus from the products. EM put down rubber all over Javits, so read on to find out more.