Three weeks later and we finally feel comfortable saying we’ve recovered from the frenzied activities of the world’s foremost celebration of cocktails.
Partly representing our clients and partly to satisfy our own cocktail nerdiness, many from Moose descended upon New Orleans July 8-12, alongside thousands of the world’s best bartenders and most well-known cocktail enthusiasts.
So in-between our tourist-inspired nights on Bourban Street and do-as-the-locals-do excursion to Frenchmen Street, what did we see?
A hunger for knowledge.
I know you’re thinking, “A week dedicated to drinks. There can’t be anything serious about that.” But in fact, the uber-social, fun-loving people who attend Tales are intent on gathering and sharing knowledge to improve their personal careers and shared profession. What does this mean for marketers? We think the most value you can provide to attendees is through sponsorship of seminars – give them what they came for.
Focus on the experience.
If any environment could be cause for over-stimulation, Tales certainly qualifies. That means if you want to make an impact as a brand, you’ve got to do something that really resonates and most of the successes we saw were by creating memorable experiences.
Judging by over-capacity turnouts and Twitter-based buzz, we felt good about our own forays into this arena. We hosted a tasting room for Benedictine, B&B, Disaronno and Drambuie that transported guests to each of the cordials’ homes around Europe, complete with passport stamping.
At our tasting room for Martini & Rossi, we invited attendees into the infamous Martini Terrazza, frequented by cultural elite in the ‘50s and ‘60s, for sips of wine and bites of hors d’oeuvres.
Not to mention, we played an important part in several of the week’s best parties, including Bacardi B-Live, the Benedictine 500th Anniversary Party (below) and the Grey Goose Blue Room and Tasting in the Dark.
A great sponsorship by Fiji Water.
As a result of the legendary Louisiana heat and cocktail sampling that began at 9 a.m. daily, attendees flocked to the tables of complimentary bottled water prominent at every official event. Their presence was not only high profile but also relevant and valuable to these trend-setting people. So we say, kudos to Fiji.
Responsible consumption.
If you attended four seminars a day, each with three cocktail samples (albeit 3 oz. drinks), attended one or more tasting rooms and spent the evening at a seemingly never ending series of cocktail receptions and sponsored parties, well then you could very easily be on your way to a binge-level day of drinking. However, the accepted approach to surviving the rigorous schedule was to sip but not finish samples, take advantage of Fiji’s smart presence to stay hydrated and make socializing more of an evening priority than downing drinks. Overall, it was good to see an industry practicing what it preaches.
A fascination with Eastern bartending.
The Asian approach to the service industry is one of perfection rather than innovation, and our nation’s leading mixologists are fascinated with the intricate skills their counterparts across the globe have developed. (We saw not only the famed ‘hard shake’ in action, but we also saw a scientific breakdown of the physics involved in it.) So, we see trend-setting bars focusing on the mastery of these precise techniques, and, if we’re all lucky enough, they won’t lose the sense of creativity that already distinguishes them.
And now, recovery complete, we’re ready to start in on the pile of business cards we brought home in order to keep in touch with all the friends we made.