Transcript | 6 : 5 Holiday Hosting Ideas to Surprise and Delight Your Guests | The Experiential Table Podcast

CYNTHIA SAMANIAN: You're listening to the Experiential Table episode six.

The holidays are here and if you're playing host for a branded event, dinner party or frankly any other kind of gathering, you might be wondering how you can make things a little different this year. Well, I'm going back to my dinner party roots and sharing a few ways you can engage your guests. We are having a lot of fun in this episode, so grab a mug of hot cocoa or maybe some spiced wine and let's dive in.

Are you planning an event in the coming weeks for the holidays? Well, if so, then you're in luck because in today's episode I'm sharing five creative ideas to get your guests engaged, especially during this festive time of year. Now, these ideas are inspired by our past events at Hidden Rhythm. We've produced them for brands including Bob's Red Mill, Simply Organic and more. These are tried and tested ideas and I cannot wait to share them with you. But, I don't want you to think this episode is just about throwing a fun party. In fact, what I'm about to share with you are ideas based on experiential marketing principles that work no matter the setting. It's a fact that when people are creating, learning, or connecting, they are more likely to retain the experience and your brand in their long-term memory. As a brand marketer, this is the Holy grail, so why settle for anything less. But before we get started, I'd like to remind you of one of my favorite services, especially for this time of year.

If you're scrambling to find a venue for your upcoming event, then look no further. Peerspace is your one-stop for creative venues in your city. I like to describe it as the Airbnb for event spaces. You can find everything from an urban industrial space to a cozy loft. Also, what I love is that there's a range of pricing and that it's all shown upfront, so you don't have to send countless emails to venue managers to get their rates. As an affiliate of Peerspace, I'm excited to offer a very special discount to first-time users of the service. You can save 10% off your first booking up to $50 off. Now that's money you could spend on wine, right? So go to hiddenrhythm.com/peerspace to explore the site and get your discount. It's only available through that link, so be sure to use it. Now let's get started with our ideas!

Like I said earlier, we have five ideas, and I've actually split them up into three buckets. The first bucket is around creating. When you create something, you are much more invested in it and it's a really great way to not only have people engaged in the activity but also have them remember what it is that they made, why they were there and the context around it. So the number one tip that I love for parties, whether it's a holiday or not, is the holiday garnish bar. What's fantastic about this is that you can enable people to get creative without putting too much work into it. I call this controlled creativity. No matter what you do, you can't ruin it. And that's kind of what you want for something like this. At the end of the day, you want everyone to have a really great experience or in this case, a really delicious cocktail, mocktail, whatever it is.

We've done this for a few different branded events and we change it up seasonally. So what I'm going to describe here is what we'll do for holiday events. We'll start with a batched cocktail and once again these can be non-alcoholic, it doesn't really matter, but the idea is that you want to have one to two cocktails that are made in advance and that can hold really well so that you don't have to mix them on the spot. Or you could just have champagne. We've done this before with just sparkling rosé and champagne and it's super easy because, of course, you can just pop open the bottle and you already have your drink to start. Then you want to put out some small dishes with a variety of garnishes. Now for the holidays, I love using sugared cranberries, rosemary sprigs, and pomegranate arils. You can also add lemon peel or candied ginger.

Really, you can't go wrong here, but one trick is to keep it simple to prepare in advance. So, you don't want to do anything that is so elaborate that as you run out it will be really hard to replenish. That's why I love rosemary sprigs, for example, because you can buy a bunch of them, rinse them, make sure that they're trimmed to the right length and put them in a cup, and people can grab them as they please. You can also find super cute cocktail picks online at Amazon or even Etsy has some great sellers who make really fun festive ones. You can also make your own. We've done that in the past where we've just tied a little piece of ribbon on the top and affixed it with glue. I'll include a link to the DIYs in the show notes, so you can check those out if you have some spare time and want to make them yourself.

And the cocktail picks are perfect because they serve as skewers for your sugared cranberries or any other garnish you have that will look great on a little stick sitting right on the cup. So a lot of this is about aesthetic and creativity and inspiring people to have a little fun with dressing up their cocktail and of course knowing that they really can't ruin it. Now we've talked about what's in the cocktail and what's on top of it, but what is it served in? Well, of course you'll need some sort of glassware and while you could use plastic or compostable cups, one idea that we have used before that has worked well is heading to our local thrift store and the Goodwill down the street had such an awesome selection of these champagne coupe glasses that were vintage-inspired or maybe they were vintage. They were so fun and they were all really different.

That was an intentional look that we went for. And I'm telling you, these were probably less than a dollar each. They might have even been on sale for 25 cents, but it was so cool to have them all set-out and so not only could people customize their cocktail garnish, but they actually first started the customization process by finding the glass that spoke to them. I'll also include a link to a photo of them and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. They're so fun and having the variety really made them feel so festive and just perfect for the holiday season. And of course, you could use this any time of year. This format is super flexible and customizable based on the season or holiday that you're celebrating. So you want to keep this one in your back pocket and trust me, it never gets old.

The next idea I'd like to share is also under the umbrella of creating things and it's inspired by an event we hosted for Bob's Red Mill last Thanksgiving.

The event was called Bob's Bakeshop and we essentially invited a couple of dozen influencers and media to a beautiful cooking school in San Francisco. In advance, we had selected three of the influencers who we wanted to share a recipe that was meaningful to them. It was a recipe for a baked good and we prepped in advance these three stations where it was all set up for the other attendees to show up and actually bake something. So we had a shortbread cookie, we had a delicious chocolate cake with pears inside, and we also had a classic chocolate chip and oatmeal cookie recipe. Well, I'm not going to dive too much into that event. I could probably have an episode just about it. But what was really special about that event is what we did at the end. Rather than have these influencers go home with dozens of cookies and a cake and shortbread, we anticipated that they'd probably want to do something with them and perhaps gift them.

So we set up a gifting station where we had boxes and ribbons and all sorts of embellishments that made it super easy for people to wrap up their baked goods and give them to a friend. And back to what we did is we surprised people and said, if you have someone in San Francisco, you want to have this delivered to give us their address and we'll surprise them the next day with your baked goods. It was phenomenal. People were so surprised to receive them. And the influencers felt really good because they finally got to give something to someone they cared about from these events. Oftentimes they get invited and they leave with so much swag and it just becomes a lot. So what was really great about this event is that we tapped into the warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you gift someone freshly baked cookies or any other baked good or food.

So what does this mean for your next event? I'd love for you to challenge yourself to think about how you can incorporate giving, especially a surprise element of giving into your party. So whether people are making something that could then be gifted -- and you don't have to do it like we did and actually hit the road and hand-deliver them. But if you could allow them to create something that they could then take home and give to someone they love, that could go a really long way. People want to feel good about themselves, so by giving them the opportunity to give something to someone they care about or love, you're making it so much easier for them to feel good, not only about themselves but also about your event. It's a win, win, win all around. Creating or making something is always a big hit with guests. People feel more ownership over what they've made and this makes them more likely to talk about it, take a photo of it and share it with friends.

The next idea I'm going to share is under the umbrella of learning. So first it was around creating. Now we're talking about learning, and then we'll have one more category to wrap it up. And this is actually tied to the Bob's Bakeshop example I just shared with you. If you can give people the opportunity to learn from others, then your event is going to be so much more meaningful to them. So let's hop back to the Bob's Bake Shop event. While we could have just had the baked goods ready and people could have enjoyed them or wrapped them for a friend, what was really valuable was the fact that they got to learn something from their fellow influencers or content creators.

They got to learn about the recipe and they got to learn about the story and the significance behind it and why the influencer had chosen it. The influencers demoed it, they walked through step-by-step. They even shared some unique tips and tricks and for the attendees, given that they were all interested in baking and cooking, this was really exciting for them. We also printed out recipe cards so people could take them home with them and try and replicate it at home, even though they had already made it in the bakeshop too. But we wanted to reinforce the learning element and ensure that people didn't just go home and forget about this awesome recipe that they had discovered. Now you don't have to have three different types of recipes and a full-on cooking school experience to replicate this, but think about how you can incorporate some form of learning, whether it's having someone do a demo or bringing someone in to do a short workshop that somehow tied into the interests of your audience. There are so many different ways to do this. Also, these aren't mutually exclusive. So we talked earlier about creating something and you can create something and learn at the same time. So if you can find ways to incorporate both in the same activity, even better.

Now onto the third and final category, and that's connecting. So we've talked about creating learning and now connecting. This is one of the experiential pillars that make events so much more meaningful and memorable to its attendees. We've actually used this tip - which is number four if you're counting - in our events from almost the beginning, and it stemmed from this idea of wanting people to disconnect, especially when they were at the dinner table and the secret, my friends, are mini-phone bags. That's right. Mini bags for people's cell phones. We started putting these under the dinner plates at our events and it was so fun to surprise people.

They'd get to the table and of course, their phone is in hand. We'd welcome everyone to the dinner and we'd ask them to lift up their dinner plate. And underneath it they'd see a little cotton sack and maybe there would be a card inside with a thoughtful quote or maybe it would be empty. And it hadn't quite clicked for people what was going on yet. But then we invited them to feel free to set their phones in the bag and set it aside. And honestly, the first time we did this, I didn't know how people would react. Most of the attendees at our events, in the beginning, were influencers and content creators. This was the audience that our brand clients really wanted to connect with. And it's no secret that you need your phone to create content. So you might be wondering what were you thinking, Cynthia?

But we did it, because our values and the values of our brand was that the dinner table is sacred and I encouraged the brand to buy into this belief that if people connected with each other over the dinner table, they would remember the experience and the brand far more than a quick photo that they posted on Instagram stories. Of course, we had photos before and after dinner and we also had a photographer who was taking beautiful photos of the food while this was all happening. But they were very behind the scenes and really weren't noticeable, which was fantastic and it essentially gave the guests permission to just be people and to connect and to have a real conversation. It worked really well the first time and we've done it ever since. This is something that you can do. It's super simple. I'll include a link to the bags that we use, but really you could probably find some at your local stationery or craft store.

You can even brand them. We did some really fun metallic paint to dress them up. There are so many ways you can take them and you can, of course, reuse them. I highly recommend this. It's one of my favorite go-to ways to surprise and delight people, but also set the tone for an evening of really good conversation and not being glued to our phones. Also, I hinted at this earlier, but you can put a little card inside. Maybe it has some info about your brand or a quote from your founder, something that is meaningful and inspirational. You can use this as extra real estate to brand this experience.

And that brings us to our last tip you can use to surprise and delight your holiday guests. I couldn't help but include this final tip, which is super fun. It's kind of kitschy and I just had to throw it in here because Thanksgiving is right around the corner.

One of the ways that you can get people to connect is to help them break the ice, or in this example, break a wishbone. That's right. We've done this for a few of our Thanksgiving-themed dinners and it's just a playful take on the tradition of breaking the wishbone. We actually did this every Thanksgiving in my family. Once we would retrieve the wishbone from the turkey, one person would grab one end, the other would grab the opposite end and you'd each make a wish to yourself and then pull. Whoever ended up with the larger piece of the wishbone would have their wish come true. Since there's only one wishbone per turkey and you're not going to cook 20 turkeys for 20 people, you might be wondering how will you get these wishbones? Well, you can make them. We actually found some online that you can buy, but back when we did this, we couldn't find any online.

So we made our own using clay and yet again, there are so many great DIYs online that show this and I'll link them in the show notes. It's a super easy activity and you really don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but trust me, people will be so delighted to see this wishbone between their plates and they're going to wonder, wait a minute, what's going on here? So what you want to do is you want to place one between two people. If you have a plate on the left and on the right, you just stick it right in the middle. They'll have no idea what to do. You could put a little tag on there that says, you know, turn to your neighbor, grab the wishbone, each make a wish, or you could just describe it to them when you welcome them to the table.

What's really great about this experience is that it's physically engaging. The idea of having two people hold the same thing and they're each pulling, all of a sudden it breaks. There's definitely an element of surprise there and it becomes this mini-shared experience. It truly breaks the ice. You could take it a step further and ask people if they'd be willing to share their wish with their partner or with the group, but that's totally optional. The key here is that you want people talking with each other, getting to know one another and this activity is super quick, really light and just helps people relax.

If you give this tip a try or honestly any of the tips that I mentioned, I would love to see them. Share your photo with us on Instagram by tagging us at hidden_rhythm. I cannot wait to see it.

Well, that wraps up our show for today. I hope these five tips have inspired you to do something a little different for your holiday events. Remember, if you can help people create something, learn something or engage or connect with one another, then you are setting yourself up for event success.

Thanks for tuning into this week's episode. If you enjoyed it, then please be sure to rate, review, and definitely subscribe so you don't miss our next episodes. Also, don't forget to check out our private Facebook group. It's called The Experiential Table and there you'll find a community of founders, brand marketers and basically anyone who's super excited to learn about experiential marketing. If that's you, then you definitely want to join. It's also the first place where I share upcoming workshop announcements as well as Facebook lives, where I do mini deep dives into different topics, so I hope to see you in there.

Until next week, get excited to get experiential.