Martini Media, a leading omni-channel digital marketing firm focused on the luxury market and the affluent consumer, has announced the launch of The Martini Experience, an events and experiential division.

To help lead the effort, Martini has tapped Ian Gerard, a veteran brand experiential marketing leader. Gerard co-founded and ran the ground-breaking experiential marketing organization Gen Art, which brought brands to life through activations around consumers’ passion point of emerging talent. Since then, he has served as the Chief Partnership Officer of IVY, and, most recently, as Head of Brand Partnerships for CSM, Sports & Entertainment, N.A.

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Martini will bring a mix of smaller experiences and larger tentpole event opportunities to its clients.  It will leverage existing event opportunities from across its portfolio of premium publishers such as W Magazine, Saveur, Surface and BlackBook. Additionally, Martini will create custom activations and experiences in and around existing high-profile festivals and events, allowing clients to engage with affluent consumers in brand relevant environments. Martini will natively anchor the event content in relevant publishing environments and then amplify the event content through high-impact ads across select publishing, audio, and video channels that are relevant to the sponsoring brands.

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“Ian brings 20+ years of experience successfully activating consumer facing luxury brands through compelling events and experiences,” said Brian Fitzgerald, CEO of Martini Media. “Experiential marketing is one of the most effective ways to build long lasting emotional connections between consumers and brands,” added Fitzgerald.

“For most of my career, I have been focused on connecting luxury brands with consumers via shared passion points,” said Gerard. “Given Martini’s reputation in the luxury marketplace and their omni-channel marketing capabilities, there is a unique opportunity to produce events and content that resonates with the affluent consumer and then digitally distribute that content seamlessly,” added Gerard.

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