Walters: "Sleigh All Day" Holiday Popup

INDUSTRY: Restaurants

SERVICES: Events | Content + Creative | Marketing + Social | PR + Partnerships

Walters Sports Bar is located directly across the street from Nationals Park. Most popular during baseball season, they were in need of a different way to attract guests to their venue during the off-season. With Enchant “The World’s Largest Holiday Light Maze” bringing thousands of people to the neighborhood every evening, IRL set out to do what they do best - creating an exciting experience that puts you on the map.

Over night, we developed and designed a full-blown concept based on customer insights and industry trends. The solution? A one month holiday pop-up experience called “Sleigh All Day” that would attract the same guests that would be attending Enchant, along with the several corporations, and residences from the surrounding neighborhoods. With only 2 weeks to design and execute the pop-up, we got to work.

We wanted the inside of the venue to look and feel as if you were walking into an explosion of holiday decor with the ceilings covered with colorful tinsel, dangling ornaments, snowflakes, and hundreds of Christmas lights. We built a 16 foot installation of multi-sized wrapped gift boxes and hung it in the middle of the venue as the main feature of the pop-up. Outside of the venue, we rented a real-sized bright red Santas’s sleigh and designed a branded photo activation around it for pedestrians and patrons to to take pictures in front of attract them to the restaurant.

We rounded out the daily experience by creating experiential festive drinks, designed menus, curated holiday playlists, and other event programming.

Finally, Walters Sports Bar historically hasn’t had a night scene, so we created a weekly Holiday Bash hosted by local drag queen Ba’Naka and a DJ.

These efforts increased Walters’ average monthly sales by 100% for the month of December and helped pull them through the tough winter months until the Nats season begins!

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