Sofa brand Snug is hosting a boy-band reunion that 24 VIP ticket winners will get to watch live from the comfort of a Snug sofa.
Blue, Five and Blazin' Squad are set to perform their biggest noughties hits to the intimate audience from a secret location in London on 10 April. Snug is tapping into nostalgia by giving guests the chance to enjoy throwback performances, meet the bands and hear a Q&A.
Making sure to cater to its "large and growing community on social media" the concert will be live-streamed on Snug's Facebook page and online guests can interact with the bands during an "Ask me anything" Instagram Live session. Prizes and codes will also be on offer throughout the steamed event.
Rob Bridgman, chief executive of Snug, told ±±¾©Èü³µpk10: "We've got a community of 250,000 followers. And our engagement rate is 5.5%, which is more than double the industry's average. It's a large community who are also very engaged. For us, it is a brand exercise in giving our community what they want. For me, it's about bringing retail theatre to people's phone screens.
"What we've found over the last couple of years is that escapism has become quite a common and recurring theme where people like to switch off and scroll through their phone or watch their laptop or TV and relax and relieve any stress. So it's key that this is a feel-good nostalgic event that is purely entertainment."
Currently Snug has more than 171,000 Instagram followers and over 83,400 people follow its Facebook page. When it comes to its social media appeal, Bridgman has found Snug to be most popular among millennial females.
Snug felt encouraged to host a hybrid experience after positive results from an Instagram live it hosted with comedian Katherine Ryan on 16 November 2021.
The event gained enough viewers to "fill Wembley arena" and generated 42,000 comments over the 45-minute, live session. Bridgman was pleased at how engaged the Snug community has been and felt that after not being able to do experiential events for a couple of years, it is a great opportunity to now be able to bring the brand to life in the real world.
He added: "My view from the start is we are building a mass-market consumer brand, and we want Snug to be a culturally relevant brand that really speaks to our audience. I personally think that retail is moving more in favour of entertainment, especially with the way that people consume media and also the way that people sort of shop online.
"I think there's a real blur of retailers that are starting to really focus on their communities and also the content that they serve to their communities. That's always been our strategy, we're pioneers in the booming social commerce space, blurring the lines between content community and commerce."