I Launched an Experiential Marketing Agency, then COVID Hit
How We’re NOT Pivoting in the Face of a Pandemic
A year ago, I was sitting in the sweltering heat of my kitchen, trying to articulate the vision for a new brand. I’d spent the past couple years working at two preeminent institutions in the experiential world. First, Fake Love — a tragic casualty of Covid — was, in its heyday, creating truly pioneering work that beautifully blended technology, art, and brand. Then, at Refinery29’s 29Rooms, the mother of the multi-room, immersive consumer experience.
While it was so wittingly xeroxed to hawk everything from ice cream to rosé, whiskey to color, happiness and eggs — for its moment, 29Rooms so gracefully packaged cause, commerce, and creativity. It demonstrated that when people genuinely felt heard, seen, and understood by a brand, it was a winning formula. The way 29Rooms captured guests’ imaginations struck a chord with me and, I suppose, I too have set out to try to replicate the feeling we evoked in those warehouses.
Early Spring was born out of that simple desire to create work that leaves an enriching impact on those who experience it.
In understanding the inconsequence of plans but appreciating the value of planning, I wrote a detailed business plan that illustrated a cautiously optimistic vision of this future. It began as an experiential-focused business, frankly, because it was what I knew best. I also knew Early Spring would have to be capable of much more than just ‘events’, which would only be the vehicle to create the kind of impact it needed to make. There are countless creative agencies, especially ‘experiential’ ones, that supply and exploit the ‘like economy’. I knew that bringing something different to the table was imperative to our success.
By some combination of sheer force of will, desperation, and excellent timing, we landed our first client, The Arrivals, with a pop-up in Soho. Featured in Dezeen, Architectural Digest, Cool Hunting and Surface, it was incredibly validating. Then Bumble, then Estee Lauder, then Bumble again — all the while responding to requests from the likes of Amazon to Away, Two Robbers in Philly to The Arts House in Singapore — we were growing, fast.
What set us apart was a very pointed sensibility for the intersection of culture and the consumer. We had an uncanny ability to uncover truths and human desires that others didn’t even know to look for — satiating them through spaces that made brands and people feel heard, even understood by one another. We created spaces that fostered community and ultimately, transaction. By taking the time to understand our clients and more importantly, the people they wanted to serve, we were engineering serendipity.
As we grew relationships and earned trust with clients, I thought our offering would grow incrementally from experiential earning a suffix akin to ‘Full Service Agency’. I did not expect a global pandemic would force us to think so hard and introspectively about how we could still matter on the other end of it.
The sane amongst us will agree that for the time being experiential is irresponsible, deadly even. But the compounding effect of the virus, the ensuing, crucial, Black Lives Matter movement, and an economic recession have fundamentally fractured the bedrock of culture on which we operate. People are frustrated and angry, and rightfully so. They couldn’t give a shit about brands’ posturing on aesthetic grids, making baseless vows, empty apologies and the tokenization of BIPOC artists under the pretense of performative solidarity and activism — they just want to see action and change. So as the world sinks deeper into a quandary of pandemic, reckoning, and recession, it has only strengthened and focused our resolve to work with clients pushing forward meaningful change and impact in people’s lives.
There was a moment at our Bumble Bizz event in Atlanta that so perfectly captured what we were trying to achieve. A young black man, one of only ten men in an audience of over a hundred, stood up and asked a panelist what advice she had for him to overcome the shame of asking for help. There was a collective gasp that felt like the pink and yellow got sucked out of the room — people were stunned by an atypically bold demonstration of vulnerability. The speaker herself was dumbfounded. But before she could respond, another young black man stood up. Speaking directly to the first, he acknowledged his struggle and pledged his own support. Please note: this does not happen at your typical branded event. And this was not a fluke. Early Spring did the work; the research, the truth finding, the deep digging, to give that moment the best chance of coming to life — in real life.
When we distill all the work we’ve done, the common denominator becomes evident — our power lies in mediating between brands and people, translating the needs of each unto the other and creating ways for brands to play a meaningful part in consumers’ lives. In our first year, we achieved this by thinking of and designing branded experiences. Now, Early Spring is transforming brands into thoughtfully designed experiences.
