14^th April 2020: Secret Cinema, the pioneers of immersive storytelling, announces the launch of Secret Sofa, a weekly home entertainment series where audiences can create their own unique immersive cinema experiences in collaboration with celebrated ice cream brand Häagen-Dazs as presenting partner, to tie in with their new ‘‘Häag-Indoors’’ initiative.

For an initial eight weeks at 7.30 pm every Friday, Secret Sofa will facilitate a virtual in-home screening of Secret Cinema’s most celebrated and critically acclaimed films, as well as lesser-known gems.  With bespoke content, character narratives, interactive elements, typical Secret Cinema surprises and Häagen-Dazs for company, people can create their own cinema experiences to enjoy at home.  This week’s Secret Sofa screening will be the Grand Budapest Hotel.

People will be able to sign up for the Secret Sofa weekly newsletter and every Tuesday the film and pre-screening narrative will be announced.  It’s here people will be immersed in the world of the film, given costume suggestions and bespoke content and activities including sing-a-long and music playlists, instructions to learn dance routines and prop making ideas to help them create the ultimate, in-home screening environment.

Recipients of the newsletter will receive a special weekly code that allows them to order the chosen Häagen-Dazs flavour of the week online via an exclusive collaboration with Amazon Prime Now which they can enjoy with their film kicking off with the celebrated dessert-inspired flavour Strawberry Cheesecake to match the debut with Grand Budapest Hotel. They will also be encouraged to share their best #HaagIndoors images on social media with the best one winning a week’s supply of ice-cream.

The Secret Sofa Facebook group will host audience discussions both pre and post-film and will be a place for people to share images of the secret worlds they create.

Max Alexander, CEO, Secret Cinema comments: “We’re an entertainment brand and we want to bring a sense of playback into people’s homes during this time of isolation.  At the heart of Secret Cinema’s experiences is audience participation and groups of strangers coming together to experience film and culture in new and interesting ways.  Secret Sofa is our home cinema version of this, where the nation will be able to relive a Secret Cinema they loved or missed, as well as discover new titles and share their experiences with each other virtually. We are going to transform your sofa into a time machine, a portal and a place of discovery and connection with the outside world.  Secret Cinema is the master of surprises, so watch this space for other new and exciting initiatives.”

Michelle Odland, Global Brand Director of Häagen-Dazs comments: “At Häagen-Dazs, we believe that little luxuries can uplift the everyday, and we always strive to provide moments of joy and enable real connections between people, through our ice cream. This is more important now more than ever. During this time of uncertainty, we have launched our “Häag-Indoors” initiative, which we are thrilled to be partnering with Secret Cinema on. Until life returns to normal, #HaagIndoors is a simple message to stay safe, look after each other, and keep finding little moments of joy. Secret Sofa is a perfect opportunity for that, and we look forward to being able to offer Häagen-Dazs direct to your sofa to make your Friday nights that little bit more joyful. We look forward to celebrating flavour stories every week in keeping with the movie themes starting with our decadent Strawberry Cheesecake paired to Grand Budapest Hotel and rewarding the best #HaagIndoors Secret Sofa ideas as we go along to make this even more fun and interactive.”

About Secret Cinema:

Fabien Riggall created Secret Cinema in 2007.  He is also Chief Creative Officer, Creator and Executive Producer of Secret Cinema and oversees every production.

Launched in 2007, with over 70 productions to date, Secret Cinema has revolutionized the way audiences experience culture nightlife and film through the prism of secret worlds.

From grassroots film screenings in abandoned London buildings to large scale productions in vacant and abandoned spaces, Secret Cinema has regenerated areas it has invested in. At Secret Cinema productions, the boundaries between performers and audience, set and reality, are constantly shifting. These experiences explore one of the forgotten pleasures in a time with constant access to information: secrets. Fusing film, music, art, theatre, and dance, Secret Cinema creates unique spaces for social encounters, adventures and discoveries where films come to life and satisfies a desire to fill the void left by an over-saturated technological world.

About Häagen-Dazs and General Mills:

Häagen-Dazs has been making ice cream since 1961. Our founder, Reuben Mattus, had a vision to make the best ice cream in the world using high quality, carefully selected ingredients. Every Häagen-Dazs ice cream starts with 100% real cream and milk, which is then blended with carefully selected ingredients. Launching with three simple flavours – chocolate, vanilla and coffee, today the company is sold in major supermarkets, convenience stores and through foodservice channels, and has more than 24 products, including pint tubs, mini cups and stick bars.

Haagen-Dazs is part of General Mills Inc, a leading global food company founded in 1866 that serves the world by making food people love. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, General Mills had fiscal 2019 net sales of US $16.9 billion and owns a number of much-loved consumer brands – including Häagen-Dazs, Old El Paso, Nature Valley, Green Giant, Betty Crocker, Fibre One and Jus-Rol pastry.

The post Secret Cinema launches Secret Sofa in partnership with Häagen-Dazs appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Scrabble will invite visitors to celebrate how words and language have evolved over its 70-year history with a pop-up in the lower ground atrium of Westfield London on Sunday 28th October from 12-8pm.

The exhibition examines the past, present and future of Scrabble through different immersive experiences in each giant 3D Scrabble tile.

At the International Space Station, astronauts are encouraged to practice little habits and activities that remind them of home. Psychologists recognise such behaviour as being fundamental to maintaining an astronaut’s mental health and peace of mind. Playing Scrabble is one of the most popular of these spacetime activities, but there’s just one problem: no gravity.

To counter the gravity problem, the pop-up will unveil the Scrabble Space Edition, specially designed to be played in orbit. With magnetic tiles fashioned from meteorite rock, this board allows astronauts to play their favourite game no matter where they are in the galaxy.

A transparent cubed tile will also show the tense World Scrabble Championship Finale live at 12pm as the two best players in the world go head to head to lay the highest score and take the trophy. Fans will also get the opportunity to hone their skills by facing off against one of the world’s greatest players.

There will also be the opportunity to walk through seven huge Scrabble cubed tiles to discover a visual history of Scrabble and it’s fun and irreverent use in pop culture through films, TV and by celebrity fans. Scrabble celebrates how new additions to the English language lexicon make for surprising official Scrabble play words including ‘selfie’ and ‘fitspiration,’ while visitors can vote for which word they want to see included in the next Scrabble dictionary.

The pop-up is just one piece on the board of 70^th celebrations, that include a cultural film that brings together the UK’s brightest and most interesting young wordsmiths – rappers, poets and writers –  to explore the evolution of language and words through the lens of Scrabble.

The post Scrabble to celebrate 70 years with immersive pop-up appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Benefit Cosmetics has teamed up with happiness expert Laura Jane Williams to create the Hello Happy House, designed to take guests on a journey through the differing states of happiness during an immersive ‘Happy Hour’ with a difference.

The launch of the experience is to highlight Benefit Cosmetics’ newest foundation range – Hello Happy.

Featuring four interactive rooms, guests will have the chance to indulge in an experience that’ll make that Benefit says will make them smile from ear to ear.

The space includes an Instagrammable glitter shower, a relaxation room, fun fair activities and an invigorating bounce room, which encourages visitors to tap into their playful side.

To help guests unleash their joy and silliness, Benefit enlisted Laura Jane Williams, regular columnist in national press and the author of ‘Ice Cream for Breakfast’, a guide to rediscovering your inner child. Laura will be hosting happiness workshops inside the Hello Happy House on Saturday 29^th June, during which she will unpack the concept of happiness and provide top tips on how to avoid self-judgement and be more playful every day.

Laura says: “When I was researching for my book, what came up again and again is how hard it can be to be ‘adult’ – sometimes we just want to be the carefree child inside of us. This is a chance to laugh deeply, be playful and curious, and emerge on the other side brighter and lighter and more beautiful because of it. The Hello Happy House is the perfect wellbeing escape in today’s hectic world.”

Benefit Cosmetics’ Head of Brand Activation, Kyra White, explains; “At Benefit we truly believe that laughter is the best cosmetic. The Hello Happy House is the place to go to giggle, relax and generally take an hour out of your day for you. We are a nation of big kids and this is the perfect place to rediscover your inner child.”

Guests will be welcomed to the Hello Happy House where they will begin their own ‘Happy Hour’. Escorted through each room, they will get the chance to experience the Benefit world of fun and happiness, through the sequence of truly immersive activities!

To celebrate the launch the new Hello Happy range, once an hour a brand new foundation will be given away to one lucky fan (or Benebabe, as the brand calls them) in their perfectly colour matched shade. To win, consumers need to find the golden Hello Happy product, hidden somewhere within the Hello Happy House.

The Hello Happy House will be open to the public on Friday 29th and Saturday 30th June 2018 at The White Space on London’s Great Newport St from 11.00AM- 8.00PM on a drop in/first-come, first-served basis.

Benefit Cosmetics’ will then be hitting the road and bringing elements of the Hello Happy House to Bristol’s Cabot Circus Shopping Centre on Saturday 14^th July and Cardiff’s St David’s Shopping Centre on Sunday 15^th July.

Benefit Cosmetics was founded in San Francisco in the 1970s. It now has 2,000 BrowBars in 41 countries worldwide and claims to be the world’s number one brow brand.

The post Benefit Cosmetics launches Hello Happy House interactive experience appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Travel hubs offer fantastic spaces for a full spectrum of promotional activity ranging from sampling to immersive experiential activations, says Andrew Bodwick of SpaceandPeople

Travel hubs, like airports and train stations, offer a fantastic platform for a full spectrum of promotional activity ranging from sampling to immersive experiential activations. There has been an evolution in these venues recently to be more than just pure transport hubs, but rather retail destinations which has increased dwell times and customer engagement. The potential of these venues is relatively untapped but when used strategically can garner impressive results.

The opportunities in airports, for example, are broad and with the detailed demographics available, brands can be extremely targeted in their approach. Airports offer significant dwell time (2.5 hours with 70 to 80 minutes on average in the departures terminal[1]) which provides brands with a captive, relaxed and receptive audience, typically with a high socio-demographic profile.

If the passengers are going away on holiday, the excitement level is already high with the prospect of having a break and people are therefore more happy and eager to speak to retail staff and brand ambassadors, as they see it as part of the holiday experience. Being in a positive mood leads to impulse decisions and people are more open to discovering new brands they may not have otherwise considered.

Airports also offer the opportunity to target large groups of each sex going on holiday, such as stag and hen weekends.  These groups tend to be of a young, tech-savvy demographic with a high disposable income and little, if any, domestic responsibility. Likewise, a high proportion of professional couples seek refuge from their daily lives with city breaks and getaways in foreign lands. Other identified passenger groups include baby boomers who no longer have dependants and are enjoying rediscovering life with a higher disposable income and less responsibilities.

The above demographic profiles obviously focus on leisure travellers, but many airports also have an equally high proportion of people travelling for business purposes.

Airports offer unique opportunities for experiential activity as it is one of the only environments where you can be sure where consumers will be at any particular time, predict how long they will be there and where they will go next. It enables brands to be very specific in their targeting; from sampling festive related products to people going on holiday to Lapland, to giving them some home comforts on their return from a long-haul flight from Australia or creating an experiential activation for business passengers for a technology product.

Many air travellers over-index on buying core tech products, motors and media, and they tend to be early adopters of technology and are often influential within their network of friends and colleagues. Brands can therefore ensure the awareness of a specific product is raised within a specific geographical area, on a pre-defined route or time (e.g. first flights to all London airports in the morning).

Aside from airports, train stations have proven to be excellent locations for experiential and face-to-face marketing activity.

They have historically been used as sampling pods due to their high, consistent footfall; however, the recent trend has been to incorporate sample distribution with an experiential element to consolidate the brand messaging.

Lucozade Zero, for example, complemented a major sampling campaign last year targeting high footfall locations such as London King’s Cross Station by collaborating with fashion retailer Missguided and opening a ‘Zero to Pay’ nail bar, offering Lucozade Zero-inspired complimentary nail art (see picture). This not only increased brand awareness and trial with their target audience but also generated a social media buzz that would not have been possible with just pure sampling. Similarly, belVita installed a giant radio within a number of train stations at the end of 2017, offering commuters a live music performance and a sample of their recently launched soft filled belVita biscuits.

Train stations also offer a platform for PR launches and one-off events. Recently, a number of film PR stunts have taken place at central London train stations including an interactive mural for the film mother! and a shoe shining service for the latest Kingsman movie. Stations can also lend themselves well to specific seasonal or event activations, from Valentine’s Day promotions by tourist boards to a giant Thomas and Friend’s chocolate train over the Easter Weekend and a huge festive hamper activation by Waitrose looking to reach people travelling home for Christmas.

The latest technology is also being employed by many brands, with Augmented Reality being hugely popular, especially for products and services that are not necessarily that easy to get engage potential customers with.

Travel hubs have evolved from being places which people go to in order to to go somewhere else to become places where people want to spend time. The different mindsets of people, depending on their journey purpose, destination and travel means, enable brands to adopt a very targeted approach. All of these factors combined mean that although travel hubs were not necessarily considered for anything other than sampling stations previously, they are now increasingly popular for larger and more complex experiential campaigns today.

Andrew Bodwick is Head of Brand Experience at SpaceandPeople. The SpaceandPeople Group is a leading international destination media specialist, present in the UK, Germany and India, representing over 350 UK venues with a weekly footfall of over 45 million. The Group markets, sells and administers space in high footfall venues (including shopping centres, garden centres, retail parks and travel hubs), matching brands, promoters and retailers to the venues and footfalls that are right for them.

[1] Why Airports? Primesight

The post Travel hubs as platforms for brands to engage consumers appeared first on IPM Bitesize.