Gear Patrol recently partnered with Dyson on a fully custom Father’s Day event that took place on Wednesday, June 12, at the Dyson Demo Store in New York City. Dyson, in seeking to spend their budget to reach a mostly male audience for the first time, has entrusted Gear Patrol to reach this audience.
The Father’s Day event — concepted and produced by Gear Patrol’s in-house content agency Gear Patrol Studios — featured a Q&A with Gear Patrol’s Home desk editor and Dyson’s Reliability Engineer. One of the highlights of the event was the ability for readers to test the full suite of Dyson products, such as the recently-released eye strain-reducing Dyson Lightcycle™ task light, designed by Sir James Dyson’s son, Jake Dyson.
Leveraging Quantcast data in the form of an insightful one sheet, Gear Patrol proactively reached out to the British technology company Dyson about multiple event opportunities. The outreach was received by the Experiential Marketing Manager at Dyson. She had created several events partnering with female publications thanks to the great recent press around products like Dyson’s new hair dryer, the Supersonic™. Coincidentally, the Dyson team was actively looking for a publication partner with a strong tech voice and a mostly male audience to create similar brand experiences, but with an additional commerce angle.
Upon seeing the Gear Patrol audience data, it was clear that stars were beginning to align. For example, Gear Patrol’s mostly male audience has a significant HHI and is 3x more likely to have an annual discretionary spend of $2,500+ for home appliances.
With Father’s Day on the horizon, it was clear to the Gear Patrol team that a tie-in around Dyson’s new lighting project, the Lightcycle™ was a perfect match with Gear Patrol readers’ sensibilities. And that product happens to have a father and sons backstory of its own. The Lightcycle™ task light was created by Jake Dyson, son of founder, Sir James Dyson. Not only was this a product well-suited for the Gear Patrol audience, it was the perfect centerpiece for a commerce-enabled event at the Dyson Demo Store on 5th Ave in NYC.
The event attracted members of the Gear Patrol audience from throughout the Tri-State area. The Gear Patrol Home Staff Writer, Will Price, interviewed Dyson Reliability Engineer, Austin Speer about both the Lightcycle™ and Dyson’s creative processes as well. Multiple products were purchased through the course of the evening and the event was capped off by one lucky Gear Patrol reader winning a task light of his own.
