How Brands Like Microsoft Use Parties to Build Sales

Microsoft this month is spreading word of the release of Window’s 7 during several thousand parties hosted across the globe by employees and everyday people in their own homes. Each host receives a special Signature Edition of Windows 7 Ultimate to keep, as well as a party pack of supplies for guests.

Home parties are growing in favor, providing marketers with a far-reaching network of qualified hosts who invite family, friends and neighbors to experience brands in a personal setting, often interacting with the products the way they would on a daily basis in their own homes.

In addition to the Microsoft events, House Party, an Irvington, NY, based experiential marketing agency, has staged parties for Royal Caribbean, Fisher-Price, Sargento, Domino’s, Xbox, Ziploc, Ford, Werther’s, Turner Broadcasting and others. Parties range in size from 1,000 to 100,000, each averaging 3.5 to four hours. The average cost is between $200,000 and $250,000, but can run into the millions depending on the number of parties.

To recruit the hosts, House Party taps the brand’s consumer database, but also uses its own database of several hundred thousand potential hosts.

Kitty Kolding, the CEO of House Party, shares the five stages in planning the events.

1. PLANNING AND PREPPING (2-6 weeks)

This is the time to identify the party theme and entertainment and activities that will take place on the day of the party, such as contests or sweepstakes, product trial, demos or sampling. Items for party packs, delivered one week prior to the events, are identified and sourced. A discussion about whether a co-sponsor makes sense takes place. Success metrics and a time line for the events are developed. The event miscrosite is launched and communications are created to recruit hosts.

2. RECRUTING THE HOST (2-3 weeks)

Over the next several weeks, the client provides six- to 18- demographic and psychographic characteristics required of the host and attendees. House Party adds additional host predictors, such as the host’s “viral propensity,” or ability to drive lots of awareness about the parties. The hosts must be highly social, good at throwing parties and have a wide circle of friends and family who like to attend their parties. Once those attributes have been determined, a proprietary weighted scoring model is created by House Party to match hosts with the stated criteria. A promotional plan is developed by both House Party and the client and executed to reach out to potential hosts. Communications include, newsletters, e-mails to customer lists, direct mail, statement stuffers, in-store promotions and bloggers. The messages drive potential hosts to a landing page—live for two-to-three weeks—that describes the party and how to qualify as a host. (Potential hosts, typically tens of thousands, must complete a customized online questionnaire). A client meeting is held to identify the hosts to activate.

3. GETTING READY (3-4 weeks)

During this phase, the hosts are notified. They pick a party theme, customize their online party planning stages, invite friends, upload photos and stay looped in to the national party page. The party packs are shipped.

4. PARTY TIME

All of the parties happen on the same day or over a weekend.

5. POST EVENT (2-3 weeks)

Once the parties end, the focus turns to continuing interactions and communications with attendees to motivate post event brand awareness and trial, such as coupon redemption, a visit to a Web site to take an action, such as a test drive. A post-event survey is fielded and a word-of-mouth path is documented. Highly engaged guests are converted to viral agents for the brand. All data, photos, comments, videos and measurement materials are pulled from the events and an executive summary is written and delivered to the client three-to-four weeks after the events. A post-event meeting is held with the client.

“We connect everyday people with smart brands in an authentic, social setting that they get to self create,” Kolding says. “We inject the brand itself directly and intimately into this gathering of friends and give people four or five hours to try, experience, discuss and have fun with a brand.”