Charlie and The Custard Factory

At Custard Factory Spaces, one thing we pride ourselves on is making events that can often be boring and mundane in other venues, fun, experiential, interactive and memorable. A perfect example of this would be the Mars Conference, held late last year. Mars approached us with a brief to create a full site, interactive event for 120 delegates.

The day began in our 1850’s Old Library venue, most popular for conferences with it’s beautiful vaulted ceiling, sweeping archways, gothic windows and bespoke made electrical blinds. Mars brought along interesting pop ups and branding, product stations and cut out characters (including a very realistic moving Mr T!). Their fantastic branding was further enhanced with our theming and design which included a bespoke stage set with focus lighting and multi coloured table linens (reflective of M&Ms). We also provided handmade table centres – Fish bowls internally decorated with sweet wrappers, and lit from the inside. Overall, a very inviting (and rather delicious) looking space was created. And just when you thought they couldn’t indulge any more, our in house catering supplied bespoke cupcakes, handmade with Malteasers, Mars Bars, M&M’s and Milky ways. Guest speakers at the event included Mary Portas (BBC’S Mary Queen of Shops) who gave her take on the future of vending machines, and the Managing Director of Mars who gave motivating speeches on branding.

The delegates were later taken on to the other interactive elements of the event, situated in Zellig, The Custard Factory’s latest renovation which hosts a fantastic flow of natural light and modern art. One room, set up for a theatre style seminar, and another in the style of a retro corner shop where products were placed on point of sale pods to create the experience of childhood sweet shopping. A third breakout space was held in The Custard Factory’s old cinema where product advertising was shown. Here, the delegates were treated again, this time to a fair ground style pop corn machine and little bags placed on every seat for each well behaved boy or girl to fill up, and munch to their heart’s content!

At the end of the day, everyone delighted in a complimentary goodie bag containing the mars product cup cake, a variation of mars produce, mars product information and a book from a popular author.

All elements of this event were incredibly successful. These kind of themes go hand in hand with the vibes of The Custard Factory and are still looking to prove popular in 2012 in conferences, weddings and private functions. And let’s face it, we all love a bit of free chocolate!