Pop Up Mob is an experiential marketing firm that is quickly becoming a sought-after hire in the fashion, beauty and lifestyle space. The 20-something founders, Ana Pelucarte and Rita Tabet, already have worked with global brands including A$AP Rocky, Benefit, Bumble, Guess, Jose Cuervo, Mini Cooper, Spotify, and more. The company offers clients assistance with everything from pop-up strategy to concept ideation to design to build-out and operations. Pelucarte herself coded Pop Up Mob’s propriety calculator, which allows companies to budget their pop-ups seamlessly.
“In a nutshell, Pop Up Mob designs through storytelling,” says Pelucarte. “We give brands a way to speak first-hand to their consumers by developing relatable, sensorial stories that hopefully will be turned into lasting memories.”
Pop Up Mob created a pop-up for Benefit cosmetics in the style of a 50s diner.
Here are Pelucarte and Tabet’s top seven tips for running a successful pop-up:
1. Put strategy first.
Creating a strategy for a pop-up activation means paying attention to your client’s needs. It’s impossible to create an effective strategy for a brand without knowing their tastes, what they like and what they don’t, their vision and goals. Pop Up Mob becomes the ally of our clients in order to understand the best strategy for their brand.
2. Include the client in your entire process.
We don't just think of the client at the end; we include them in every stage of the process. We truly believe that no one knows better what the brand needs than the brand itself. We then help our clients strategize the best outcome based on our expertise in pop-ups.
3. Make it multi-sensory.
We design all of our pop-ups with original and authentic stories based on what we know about the client. These stories are extremely sensorial. We want the consumer seeing, touching, smelling, and even sometimes tasting their way through the activation.
4. Make it relatable.
If the consumer can’t relate to our activation, we’ve failed. Every consumer that walks through our pop-up should be able to engage with the experience. For example, we executed “The Bridge of Vida” for Spotify for Dia de Los Muertos to celebrate the lives and legacies of some of the most iconic Latin American musicians. We enabled kids to connect via the movie “Coco.” We also wanted to resonate with families of Mexican heritage on such an important day in their culture. We did this by creating a bridge covered with over 150,00 hand-placed marigold flowers in one of Hollywood’s most iconic locations.
5. Find the right balance with tech.
The best pop-ups have the perfect balance between tech elements and non-tech elements. We find a lot of pop-ups overpowered by iPads and augmented reality experiences. An overload of tech will cause people to miss out on key connections with their environment and each other. In our Kay Jeweler's pop up, we started the experience by having guests take a simple iPad test to determine which “style” bride they were, from rustic to glam to modern. Based on results, guests were then given a key to their wedding’s “personality room.” Here, performers guided guests tech-free through the activation. The right combination of simplicity and complexity stays up-to-date with the latest trends while also feeling comfortable and familiar.
6. Amplify one story so as not to confuse the consumer.
As fans of storytelling, we know that the best way to tell a story is to make it comprehensible for everyone. This means sticking to one story so that it’s easy to follow and an engaging experience for the consumers. For example, we did two different activations for Benefit this year, each amplifying their original idea. For the first pop-up, we took over a 1950's diner. Every aspect of the experience was part of this diner dialogue. In order to RSVP, guests had to reserve a spot through OpenTable. When guests arrived, they were greeted with typical diner faire of milkshakes and cheeseburgers. Their seat at the bar was transformed into a make-up experience. Our second pop-up was for Benefit’s cake-less concealer launch. We collaborated in executing a familiar bakery that was “cakeless.”
7. Take the consumer on a journey.
We ensure that all consumers have a great journey from the moment they walk in to the moment they leave. For this to be possible, it is important to lay out the flow of the pop-up, thinking about each element and area. The journey should differ from one pop-up to the next.
Ana Pelucarte was inspired by an Italian deli to create Pop Up Mob.
Pelucarte, whose parents were entrepreneurs, knew from the time she was little that she wanted to take the entrepreneurial route. Her interest in pop-ups was inspired by a small Italian market she passed by every day on her commute to Domus Academy, the leading design school in Milan, Italy, where she received a MA in product design. The market operated in a “here today, gone tomorrow” fashion where you never saw the same vendor twice. Intrigued, Pelucarte studied their method and determined that, although hundreds of years old, it would be successful in today’s retail marketing world. When she moved to New York City in 2014, she founded Pop Up Mob.
Rita Tabet enjoys staying on the edge of the latest marketing trends.
Tabet always has felt her life purpose is to create and innovate. With Pop Up Mob, she feels blessed to get to constantly push the envelope, creating new experiences for different clients and innovating as retail shifts happen in the industry.
Although the two cofounders certainly face challenges in terms of taking time off for their personal lives and learning how to be better leaders, they are grateful for having connected with their purpose at work. “The greatest reward is waking up every day excited to get your job done,” says Pelucarte. “As simple as this sounds, it is everything to me.”
To young people looking to align their careers with their life purpose, Pelucarte says, “Do it! Your biggest enemy will always be fear and uncertainty, but unless you try it you won’t know if you might have succeeded. And if for some reason you don’t succeed, you will have learned and grown so much that it will still be worth it.”
