An ‘Enchanted Garden’ and Halo Efforts Help Reddit Score Big at Germany’s OMR Festival

“There were no velvet ropes or ‘do you have an appointment?’… It stood out because it intentionally didn’t look like a b-to-b experience. It was a clear delineation from what a lot of our competitors were doing.”

-Timo Pelz, VP-Business Marketing, Reddit

Reddit’s experiential strategy includes bringing b-to-c vibes to some of the world’s biggest b-to-b events, and the annual Online Marketing Rockstars (OMR) Festival in Hamburg, Germany, this year May 9-10, was no exception. Germany is one of the brand’s fastest-growing markets, and with its sights set on expanding its EMEA presence at large, it made good business sense to journey to OMR to introduce 70,000-plus digital media and marketing execs to the targeted engagement opportunities its community-run social network offers. And to physically illustrate how the platform is a place where “communities grow,” the brand planted roots on the exhibit floor in the form of a “Reddit Garten.”

The trippy, enchanted garden-themed booth, located in the Premium Exhibition Hall at Hamburg Messe, featured interactive displays aimed at helping prospective marketing and advertising partners find their next audience on Reddit, while simultaneously immersing them in its notoriously snarky brand voice. The environment was intentionally open and accessible, welcoming in anyone who wanted to learn more about Reddit, its array of more than 100,000 communities, and how to connect with them.

More from Reddit’s event portfolio:

• Grand Ex 2023: Reddit and Giant Spoon Score the Campaign of the Year with ‘Find Your People’
• Reddit’s CES Experience Immerses Brands in its Early-adopter Audiences

Attendees were invited to either take a staff-guided tour of the space or self-navigate as they explored towering flower installations representing some of Reddit’s most popular German communities, and smaller blooms bearing QR codes that led to “niche” content and particularly unique subreddits. “Roots of success” graphics visually showcased case studies of brands leveraging the platform. And a touch screen asked provocative questions like, “Is a taco a sandwich,” with participants given the option to “upvote” or “downvote” the prompt in the same way Reddit users vote on topics.

“The strategy was to just make Reddit known—a lot of people in Germany still don’t know about Reddit the way that they might about some of our competitors,” says Timo Pelz, vp-business marketing at Reddit. “The booth was very open and very accessible. There were no velvet ropes or ‘do you have an appointment?’… It had different little kinds of whimsy all around, and it stood out because it intentionally didn’t look like a b-to-b experience. It was a clear delineation from what a lot of our competitors were doing.”

Additional touchpoints included various Easter eggs, an area dedicated to educating attendees on Reddit’s brand safety features and tiered moderation system, and a “treehouse.” Marketers could reserve a time to meet with Reddit representatives within the quirky installation, which included mushroom seats, slatted wood walls and small nods to Reddit culture throughout.

A rustic treehouse installation in the brand’s OMR Festival booth included small nods to Reddit culture, like “banana for scale.”

The Reddit Garten booth experience was at the heart of the company’s presence at OMR Festival, but a series of “halo” efforts bolstered its impact. Among them: Keynoting on the main stage, presenting a masterclass in both German and English on Reddit business solutions, hosting an executive dinner and press tours, and activating an “after dark” booth party.

The results of an event-wide, on-site survey conducted by the organizers of OMR Festival gave the brand the upvote of confidence it needed: Reddit Garten was named one of the show’s top five most talked about booth activations, cementing the event as “a big, big moment for us as a company,” according to Pelz. Plus, across attributable revenue, its own in-person surveys and the number of meetings that were hosted on-site, the brand smashed through the majority of its goals and is already in the planning stages of its OMR 2024 campaign.

“OMR is definitely something that as a marketer you should have on your radar,” says Pelz. “For us, it’s a sign of how important Germany, first and foremost, is as a market for us, then the opportunity to be able to meet our German audience, but also the Pan-European audience that’s attending. DMEXCO is the other big [show] that people certainly are going to, but OMR gave us more of an opportunity to align, brand-wise. We’re a challenger brand; we like the festival atmosphere. It almost feels South by Southwest in the middle of Germany… This is an event that’s here to stay.” Agencies: Giant Spoon; RPM.

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