Online review website and app, Yelp expanded well beyond the digital realm last year, hosting a range of successful activities and events.
Jonny Quirk, regional community and marketing lead at Yelp says the brand really wanted to shake things up in 2015, and events seemed like an effective way to achieve the company’s goals.
"Every event that we did in 2015 helped to raise awareness of Yelp in the UK and let us engage with both our loyal and new community members.
"We had great success with a number of events, some of which were our biggest and most unique ones yet. Stand outs for me included the country’s first-ever Micro-Pig Picnic aka the ‘Pignic’, our ongoing ‘Mouthing Off’ Series in Belfast which featured monthly contests to decide the best burgers and wings, and the Belfast Cocktail-Off event crowned the best cocktail in the city," he recalls.
Yelp also hosted , which included pop-up food stalls as well as mulled wine, cider, mead and ice cream in bountiful supply.
– the event saw attendees descend on an east London park to indulge in great food and beverages.
Quirk explains that experiential enables the brand to champion its core mission of discovering and sharing information about top local businesses.
"We like to do experiential campaigns so that Yelpers get to see first-hand some of those fantastic businesses and get to know each other. We also like to make our elites feel extra-special and ensure that they know they are part of a tight knit community that has some fantastic events."
Yelp plans to continue to call on events and experiential this year, however Quirk can’t reveal too much just yet.
"We're going to keep striving to surprise and astonish our Yelpers with new events, great local businesses and some mind-blowing experiences," he says.
"I can’t give too much away, but we will definitely be holding our biggest and most original event ever in the first half of 2016. It’ll be open to everyone and it’s going to be very memorable."
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