Cottonelle's outreach leveraged their partnership with Apartment Therapy's Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, here interviewing attendee Holly Burns from Nothing But Bonfires.
Looking at the sponsors of blog conference is a great indicator of the state of the industry. Who is trying to do outreach to bloggers? What activations are they selecting? The way that conferences bridge brands to attendees sets the stage for those relationships overall, so how a conference runs its sponsorship opportunities is very important to all bloggers, whether they attend a given conference or not.
Gabrielle Blair (@designmom) of Kirtsy hosted 550 attendees at the 2012 Altitude Design Summit (or Alt), a 3-day social media conference for online publishers in the design, home, fashion, event planning and lifestyle sectors of the blogosphere. That’s 250 attendees more than last year’s cap, with the event giving bloggers, photographers, artists, crafters and handmade business owners well-executed opportunities to network and learn at panel discussions, hands-on workshops, parties and field trips.
Lifestyle bloggers are highly sought after as tastemakers. Their trend curating posts, tutorials and product recommendations directly trace forward to sale conversions for advertisers and the companies featured in blog content. Alt sponsors wanted access to these bloggers, and the conference integrated sponsors into the event in several ways. Some were hits, and a few were misses, and overall the experience emphasized that high-quality, creatively designed products, tools and services are a natural part of the lifestyle blogger’s story.
Big Win: HP Brings Project Runway Winner Anya to Alt
Lifestyle photographer Penny Sylvia was happy to get an autograph from Anya for her daughter.
HP’s brand integration at Alt is a case study in how to layer highly relevant event sponsorship. Activities included:
- Celebrity appearance by Project Runway Season 9 winner Anya Ayoung-Chee. In addition to being a super relevant choice, as an extra special social media touch Anya interacted with attendees on Twitter, retweeting their photos and engaging on a personal level.
- Moreover, knowing that in addition to being fans many attendees would be perfectly suited to competing on a creative design reality program themselves, HP leveraged Anya’s appearance by replicating a Project Runway design challenge. Attendees could use a bank of HPs to try their hand at design on a touchscreen just as PR contestants did on an HP-sponsored episode; Anya got to play Heidi and pick the winner. Natasha (@Samstermommy) from Little Pink Monster designed the winning entry and received an HP of her own.
- These activities took place in one of two sponsored suites during the daytime programming. The suites also showcased HP laptops, presented information about HP’s Mag Cloud and featured a photo booth.
- HP wall designs gorgeously translated the Chinese New Year theme at one of the sponsored one of the Saturday night mini-parties.
Overall, HP’s choices added interesting content to the event, showed several of their products and services in action, amplified their investment in Project Runway into the blogosphere and defined the brand as congruent with a creative blogger’s life. Layers, each of them smart. If HP does good follow up and makes good choices with their next blogger outreach action, this is an outstanding example of how to to sponsor a blogger event.
Mostly Miss: Sponsored Mini Parties
Method's Smilebox photo experience at Alt.
On Saturday night, Alt held eight sponsored parties in hotel suites, each painstakingly decorated to a theme and each featuring a sponsor (Pinhole Press, Shift Summit, Squarespace, Wilson Art, Rue La La, HP, Blurb and Method). While the parties were beautifully appointed with lovely food and drinks served, the experience was chaotic. Some parties had advertised a limited numbers of swag bags for the first attendees, so you can imagine the lines and door rushes those suites saw–and the dearth of attendees other sponsors experienced while that was going on. As Sarah Bryden-Brown, one of the hosts of the Kirtsy/HP party, mentioned in #13 of her wrap-up post, and as several other sponsors and attendees mentioned that night, a too-common strategy.
Some sponsors let their products or the related experiences in their suites represent their brands while letting attendees focus on the party, but others had representatives mingling with guests while holding actual brand spec conversations. Despite many photo posing opportunities (which have some fans–love how of Kelly Beall of Design Crush affectionately calls them “photoboth whorage,”) sponsorship for all eight vendors didn’t seem deeply actionable or memorable nor as fun or luxe as it should have felt for the attendees, given the outlay. In all, a very compromised, jagged way to connect sponsors with attendees that made me wonder if the problem was too many parties/sponsors, the limited swag tease–or if an expo area for sponsors to talk about their products separate from the party spaces is more effective and more enjoyable for everyone.
Classic Hit: Alt Welcome Box and Lunchtime Gifts
Pretty things from Alt Swag Box and on top, a Cargoh gift box.
The Alt welcome swag has in the past been considered best-in-show as far as blog conferences go, and it was pretty perfect: a nice-sized box filled with appealing products that suited the blogs of the attendees, including art prints, notecards, unique jewelry, fabric, scarves, journals, gift certificate to make a book at Blurb, paint coupon for Sherwin-Williams, Method soap. Then at the first day’s lunch, Cargoh gift boxes were part of the table setting. Each gift was different, which created table excitement that felt a lot like Christmas morning and effectively defined Cargoh’s marketplace sensibilities as attendees showed and traded their OOAK items with each other.
The Alt blog is aggregating wrap-up posts if you want to learn more about conference-goers and their event takeaways. (Posts include: Yes There’s More, You’re Making Us Blush, Your Words, For the Love of Alt, More Alt Love, Recaps Galore.) Keep your eye on their blog or subscribe to their newsletter, because at the conference they mentioned the launch of the Alt Channel which will be a hub offering online classes throughout the year.
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