How To Plan A Pop-Up Event

Holding a pop-up event is an excellent way to engage with customers, test out a new demographic or product, and generate brand awareness. Pop-up shops and events have increased in popularity in recent years. Many small and large retailers and brands alike use the concept to temporarily access prime retail spaces for a fraction of the cost of a permanent placement. So, if you are looking to maximise your brand’s exposure and make a lasting impact in a short timescale, follow our top tips below.

How To Plan A Successful Pop-Up Event

The flexibility of pop-up events allows you to follow and cater to your target audience, trial new product lines and create a unique and memorable experience for consumers. Many well-established businesses successfully use pop-up shops and events as part of their marketing strategy to narrate a brand story, add a revenue stream and build brand awareness. Behind every effective pop-up event is lots of careful, considerate planning and preparation. When properly organised, pop-up events allow your business to connect more intimately with customers and draw people towards its products or services. However, these events can be costly and complicated to set up. As highly experienced entertainment providers, we know exactly how to plan and execute incredible events that people won’t be able to stop talking about! In this article, we have provided some tips which will aid you in planning the pop-up event of the year and making the monetary investment worthwhile.

• How To Organise A Pop Up Event
• Pop Up Event Examples

How To Organise A Pop Up Event

By selecting the perfect location, implementing effective promotional methods and, most importantly, creating a fun and memorable experience for your attendees, you can be confident that your event will get people talking.

Where Do I Host A Pop-Up Event?

The location of your pop up event is crucial to its success. The space you choose should reflect what you intend to achieve with your pop-up: selecting a busy area where there will be a high number of members of your target market will maximise exposure of your business to potential customers, increasing the opportunity for sales.

Within A Shop

Hosting your pop-up within an existing retail store with a similar target market as your business is an excellent way to reach the relevant audience. This option is also compatible with a small budget and ideal if you do not require a large space for your pop-up. However, it does limit your potential customers to those who decide to enter the store you choose to set up in.

In A Shopping Centre

Shopping centres are full of people wandering around in a “ready to buy” mindset, making them ideal locations for a pop-up event selling products. Many brands choose to host their events in shopping centres due to the variety of available setups: kiosks, booths and vacant retail spaces can be rented for easy pop-up assembly, or businesses can set up freestanding structures or units themselves in empty floor space. The latter option allows more flexibility over the size and appearance of your pop-up, making it perfect for businesses looking to build a brand narrative or catch people’s attention with a unique and visually exciting structure. Shopping centres are ideal for your pop-up if you require more space, for example, if you have bulkier products you wish to display. This option also allows you to have a standalone selling space that you do not have to share.

Outdoors

Places with high foot traffic are ideal locations for pop-ups, bringing potential buyers right by your setup. Busy city centres are a perfect example of this. Outdoor pop-ups also allow for more freedom in the design and size of your setup than a pre-built retail space. If you want to get creative with your pop-up, check out the services we offer to make your event one to remember.

How Do I Promote A Pop-Up Event?

Pop-up events typically only last a few days, so it is essential to inform as many people as possible of your event before it occurs. There are various ways to promote your event ahead of time to help get the word out to members of your target market and maximise the number of attendees. However, it is typical for many pop-up event attendees to be passers-by who are intrigued by the setup and spontaneously drop in on the day. Therefore, having a visually interesting pop-up should not be neglected as an essential form of promotion! Why not look into including one of our graffiti walls in London in your pop-up event, giving it a unique edge that will draw in people of all ages?

Flyers

Get the attention of consumers with eye-catching flyers. These should include key event information such as dates, timings and location, along with a brief description of the event and your brand. You can design your own custom flyers on Vistaprint and have them professionally printed for a very reasonable price. There are several ways you can disperse your flyers:

• Door to door mail drop
• Newspaper insert
• Street distribution
• In-store distribution

When deciding how to distribute your flyers, consider your target market: street distribution in the future location of your pop-up is an ideal way to inform people who live nearby of your event. Likewise, in-store distribution is an excellent way to advertise your event to people who may be interested in your brand and willing to travel to that particular location.

Press Release

A press release is an official statement made to journalists or newspapers in the hope of having the information relayed published. Press releases are an excellent way to promote the upcoming event of your pop-up to a wide audience and increase sales potential.

Social Media

Take advantage of the ever-increasing presence of social media by utilising different platforms to promote your events to thousands of people with minimal effort. Here are some ways you can use social media to promote your event:

• Direct message Instagram influencers inviting them to attend your event and promote it in exchange for an incentive such as free products.
• Create a hashtag for the event and encourage its use. You can incentivise this by offering customers a small discount on any purchases made if they post a photo using the hashtag in the caption.
• Make a dedicated events page on Facebook to share information about and promote your pop-up. This will also allow you to estimate a headcount for your event, should you have a restriction on numbers, for pandemic-related reasons or otherwise.
• Post Snapchat stories of the preparations leading up to the event, e.g. the store being set up or a sneak peek of exclusive products available at the event. These can be posted to a public location story on the Snap Map for maximum exposure.

Find A Creative Edge

To make your event extra enticing and instagramable, why not have a look into our graffiti wall hire in London? Draw consumers to your event with one of these interactive displays, which allow people to get creative and design photo backdrops themselves before sharing their masterpiece on social media. We can provide a brand-themed wall featuring your logo and slogan to maximise the promotion of your business by pictures uploaded to social media. Our London photobooth hire service also provides event attendees with the opportunity to share an aesthetic snap of their photo strips which can be personalised to promote your brand.

Pop Up Event Examples

We have provided some examples of successful pop-up events and shops to help you get inspired! From futuristic shopping experiences to colours that you can taste, these brands prove that the sky’s the limit when it comes to creativity with your pop-up event.

Pop-Up Store Event

Creating a pop-up shop is a perfect way for brands to create some buzz around their name while also trialling new concepts or product lines. These pop-up shops drew people in with exciting designs and technology, gaining media attention and promoting their brands in the process.

Arnsdorf

Australian brand Arnsdorf made its mark on the fashion industry with its pop up retail space decorated using 154 pairs of neutral-coloured tights. The intricate cave-like interior was inspired by crystalline forms and imagery of rocky landscapes. Despite being open for only three days, the pop-up store gained a lot of attention and remains one of Australia’s most impressive and innovatively designed fashion events. By using an innovative and visually striking design for their pop-up, Arnsdorf launched their brand into the centre of the conversation for the cost of a few pairs of tights!

Photo credit: Modlar

Knit for you by Adidas

Enticing consumers with the promise of creating their very own bespoke garment, the Adidas knit for you event gave those in attendance a taste of the future high-street retail experience. After arriving at the shop, attendees would enter a dark room where an array of patterns were projected onto their chests. The design could be changed with a swipe of the hand, allowing customers to browse through the available options. Full-body scans would then be used to size chosen designs into garments. Customers could then hit the print button and watch their custom jumpers come to life before their eyes. This concept evolves the current retail model from ‘see it, buy it’ to ‘think it, test it, make it, buy it’. It could revolutionise the way we consume clothing. By having custom garments made to people’s exact size, we could avoid the waste and negative environmental impact of mass production and consumption. With this pop-up shop, Adidas used exciting technology to draw people in, allowing the brand to test a potential new line of products.
Photo credit: Engadget

Pop-Up Dining Event

It’s no secret that the way to someone’s heart is through their stomach, so what better way to spread the love for your brand than a pop-up eating experience?

Pantone Colour Cafe

Pantone are the inventors of the Pantone Matching System, a standardised colour matching system that allows printers and designers to specify exact colours for printing. The world-renowned company’s Monaco pop-up cafe offers menu items each named after a signature Pantone colour. The company’s wild diversification from colour systems may seem random, but this clever marketing project promotes brand awareness through media attention and Instagram posts of the aesthetic eats.

Photo credit: Eater

Corporate Pop-Up Event

Corporate pop-up events are the perfect way to motivate and show appreciation towards employees or launch a product line in style to ensure it gets the attention it deserves. An excellent way to engage your attendees, whether employees or customers, is to include an interactive activity in your pop-up event.

Cath Kidston x Merci Maman

In celebration of the collaboration between the iconic British home and fashion brand Cath Kidston and the personalised jewellery brand Merci Maman, Harry & Edge provided their reputable London photobooth hire service to a Cath Kidston store, who chose the compact photobooth option. The store chose to have the photobooth shell customised with one of the brand’s classic floral prints and selected three photo strip styles for customers to choose from, as included in our photobooth package. The result was an exciting addition to the store in honour of the launch of the brand’s collaborative limited-edition Mother’s Day line. The photobooth served as a brilliant promotion of the collaboration, enticing customers to interact with the brand and leaving them with a positive experience. If you are interested in hiring a photobooth in London, please feel free to get in touch with our team!

Hosting The Pop-Up Event Of The Year

We hope our tips have given you the inspiration you need to host the ultimate pop-up event. If you would like the help of our highly experienced team to make your pop-up event a hit through interactive entertainment, do not hesitate to get in touch. Whether you are interested in our photo booth hire in London or one of our many other services, our dedicated team is ready to boost your brand exposure! For some creative and fun photobooth ideas, visit our previous article.