We were blown away and so happy with the results we're now seeing.Lead Digital Strategy & Execution Manager
At Home with HiPP: Creating a More Meaningful Influencer Experience for a New Generation of Parents
Objective
For brands looking to build relevance with a younger audience, creating content alone is not enough. People want to experience brands in ways that feel authentic, useful and relevant to real life.
HiPP Organic wanted to explore exactly that through its first major IRL brand activation and influencer event. The aim was to create a welcoming experience for parents and their children that felt less like a traditional brand event and more like stepping into a supportive home away from home.
There was an important strategic thought behind the experience. HiPP wanted to build stronger relevance with a younger generation of parents, creating genuine connections that could translate into advocacy, recommendations and authentic content.
That meant the experience couldn’t feel overly polished or instructional. It needed to recognise the reality of family life and give parents something genuinely useful in return.
The ambition was simple: make parents feel supported, not judged, while giving them plenty of reasons to engage with HiPP, create content and talk about the brand afterwards.
The brief
MGN Events was asked to bring this thinking to life through a two-day influencer and brand experience.
The brief was to create an environment that felt:
- Honest rather than overly polished
- Supportive rather than instructive
- Useful without being overwhelming
Most importantly, parents needed to feel that the experience had been designed with them, rather than simply designed to sell to them.
What we did
We turned a venue into a home away from home
The real starting point for us was chosing the perfect venue that aligned not only with the brief, but the HiPP brand. Our venue finding team immediatley proposed The Apartment Collection at The Hoxton hotels in London and on further research and site visited we selected The Apartment at The Hoxton Shepherds Bush in London. The venue’s Apartment provided the perfect starting point. It already had a relaxed, residential feel, so rather than transforming it beyond recognition, we enhanced its homely character and created a series of thoughtful spaces designed around the needs of parents and children.
From the moment guests arrived, every detail was considered around the realities of family life.
A dedicated buggy park meant parents could leave their buggies safely and move more freely around the experience. A private feeding area gave mums somewhere comfortable and discreet if they needed it, while certified children’s entertainers created opportunities for little ones to play, colour, sing and explore.
Further Reading: Where to Run a Brand Activation
The aim wasn’t to separate parents from their children. It was to give families the flexibility to spend time together, while also creating small moments that were just for the adults.
Even the catering followed this thinking. Guests could enjoy breakfast bites in the morning, including avocado sourdough toast, yoghurt and granola pots, mini egg and bacon wraps and fresh fruit. In the afternoon, the menu moved towards more sociable sharing food, with everything made gluten free so that one family member could enjoy the full menu alongside everyone else.
For children, there were familiar favourites including chicken nuggets and hot dogs, alongside veggie sliders, falafel, spring rolls and other bite-sized options.
Creating content opportunities that felt natural
For an influencer event, content was naturally important, but we didn’t want guests to feel as though they had arrived on a set.
Instead, we built moments into the environment that people would genuinely want to photograph and share.
Large 50cm cubes were stacked to create oversized children’s building blocks, while mirrors featured positive vinyl affirmations designed to remind parents that they were doing a great job. They also provided an easy and natural content opportunity.
A vintage-style branded photo booth created nostalgic photo strips for families to take away, while beautiful floral arrangements framed key areas including the welcome signage.
A bespoke bookcase became an interactive game, filled with books for parents and children. Guests could choose a bookmark and were guaranteed to win a gift card, turning a simple piece of décor into an engaging brand interaction.
There was also a glimmer wall where parents could leave messages in a letterbox, while a corridor was transformed to create a montage of real-life family portraits.
Further Reading: How Much Does a Brand Activation Cost?
Making the brand useful beyond the event
Some of the most effective elements were those guests could take home.
A dedicated kitchen area featured recipe cards that parents could pick up and use at home. HiPP products were thoughtfully integrated throughout the experience, giving parents the opportunity to discover and try them rather than simply being presented with branded messaging.
We also created three HiPP playlists: Slow Moments, Kitchen Party and Sleep Sounds. QR codes around the venue allowed families to scan and take the playlists home with them, extending the experience beyond the two days.
Every family also received a carefully considered goody bag, while My First Years joined the experience with a stand offering personalised gifts for little ones.
An experience designed around real family needs
The programme itself was deliberately flexible. We worked carefully with the client team to consider the best timings and programme format that would encourage and support attendance from the key audience.
Educational talks had originally been planned back-to-back. We quickly recognised that this could work against the very audience we were trying to support. Parents don’t necessarily want, or need, to sit through a full day of talks.
So we introduced breaks between sessions, giving parents more choice over how they spent their time and making it easier for them to join the content that was most relevant to them.
We also made sure guests knew when talks were about to begin, allowing them to dip in and out without feeling that they had missed their opportunity.
It was a small operational change, but an important one. Rather than asking parents to fit around the event, we adapted the event around them.
Seamless event management behind the scenes
There was plenty of production and logistics to coordinate behind the scenes.
More than 70 branded items had to be designed, approved and printed to deadline working alongside both the in-house MGN design and graphics teams as well as the client’s own in-house graphic designer. To keep everything moving, MGN Events created a shared asset tracker so both teams had visibility of artwork stages, approval deadlines and outstanding requirements.
With approximately 60 guests attending each of four sessions, careful guest management was essential. From registration and arrival through to the buggy park, talks and activities, the experience needed to feel effortless.
That is often the difference between a good brand activation and a great one: the guest sees the experience, while the event team sees everything that needs to happen to make it work.
The results
The response demonstrated that creating an experience around what people genuinely need can deliver meaningful results for a brand.
The event achieved an 88% attendance rate, showing a strong appetite among invited guests to experience HiPP in person. More importantly for an influencer-led activation, guests created more than 250 pieces of user-generated content in the first few days, extending the experience well beyond the physical event and giving HiPP authentic content created by the people it wanted to connect with.
The experience also gave HiPP an opportunity to demonstrate its brand values in action. Rather than simply telling parents that the brand understands family life, the event showed it through practical details, thoughtful hospitality and an environment where parents could relax, ask questions and enjoy time with their families.
For MGN Events, that was the real measure of success, creating an IRL experience that people wanted to be part of, wanted to share and, importantly, wanted to remember.
With the next major HiPP activation already on the horizon, the event has created a strong foundation for building even greater connection between the brand and the next generation of parents.
250+
Pieces of UGC shared within the first 48 hours
88%
Turnout rate of invited audience over two days
5*
Overal event feedback and satisfaction score rating
What is a brand activation and influencer event?
A brand activation and influencer event is a live experience designed to bring a brand to life, build meaningful connections with an audience and create moments people want to talk about and share. MGN Events combines creative ideas, thoughtful details and seamless production to create experiences that feel authentic to the brand and give guests a genuine reason to engage, create content and spread the word.
Brand activation or influencer event FAQs
1. What is the objective of a brand activation and influencer event?
The objective is to create a memorable experience that connects people with a brand in a meaningful way. Depending on the brief, that could mean launching a product, building awareness, generating content, creating advocacy, reaching a new audience or strengthening relationships with existing customers and influencers.
2. How do you create an authentic influencer experience?
The best influencer experiences don’t feel like advertising. We create environments that feel natural, welcoming and worth spending time in, with thoughtful details and experiences that give guests a genuine reason to engage. The result is an experience that feels true to the brand while giving influencers plenty to talk about and share.
3. How can a brand activation encourage content creation?
Content works best when it is built naturally into the experience rather than added as an afterthought. We create visually interesting spaces, interactive moments and memorable experiences that guests genuinely want to capture and share. From immersive installations and photo opportunities to personalised details and unexpected moments, every element can become part of the story.
4. How do you make an influencer event stand out?
It starts with understanding what matters to the audience and what makes the brand distinctive. We then build a creative concept around that, bringing it to life through the venue, styling, entertainment, experiences, content opportunities and small details that make guests feel considered. The aim is to create something people remember, not just another event to attend.
5. How do you measure the success of a brand activation or influencer event?
Success looks different for every brief. We can measure everything from attendance and engagement to content creation, social reach, audience sentiment and brand interactions. Most importantly, we start with the objective and the customer and design the experience around the outcomes the brand wants to achieve.
