H-E-B TexFest & H-E-B Tailgate Tour

It's hard to express how the absolute WOW of the IPW Press Conference was born of the heart, soul, creativity, passion, dedication and hard work of the CE Group. From the very beginning planning discussions, to the tiniest detail at conclusion, nothing escaped their attention or commitment to make everything spectacular. Every nuance - concept ideation, decor, F&B, entertainment, signage, integration of cultural elements, logistics, flow, and more were infused and led by them.

- Dee Dee Poteete, Director of Regional Communications, Visit San Antonio

OPPORTUNITY

H-E-B has always made it their mission to stay connected with their audience and community through brand activations. This allows H-E-B to create meaningful experiences for their customers, while also promoting H-E-B’s own-brand products. For example, H-E-B TexFest, a three-week celebration highlighting both Texas inspired and local products through pop-up performances in stores all across Texas, gave shoppers a delightful surprise during their weekly grocery run with music, giveaways, and a reason to shop local. Bringing the community together through activations like the H-E-B TEXtreme Tailgate Tours, a month-long tour that showcased Cooking Connections and recipes at college football tailgates, truly shows just how much brand activation and customer appreciation go hand in hand.

SOLUTION

The CE Group’s Events team worked alongside H-E-B to plan and produce both of these incredible activations. Our team coordinated 42 H-E-B TexFest in-store activations in 20 cities across 5 regions in Texas. Each activation consisted of pop-up parade performances with local entertainment that were tailored to each region and their audience in Texas, as well as assisting H-E-B store partners in passing out 72,200+ giveaways throughout the three-week long celebration. From 5 days of activation experiences, 4,000 miles traveled around Texas, and 93 hours of on-site activation time, H-E-B TexFest exceeded expectations with over 22,000 customer interactions.

When football season comes around, you can always trust that H-E-B will have your game day needs. Over the course of 5 weeks, our team travelled to 5 cities, produced 5 tailgate activations, worked with 27 H-E-B chefs, passed out 26,000 giveaways, and served over 5,000 samples of the curated game day recipes. We worked with each college university on an impactful layout plan that allowed us to bring H-E-B’s Cooking Connection to the forefront of each tailgate occurrence. The CE Group coordinated extensively with H-E-B chefs and our staff to ensure they were prepped and ready to feed thousands of hungry tailgaters with a genuine customer service experience. Our team also coordinated and managed a giveaway tent where our team interacted with attendees and passed out free H-E-B swag.