For the last two years, the half-million attendees of the Lollapalooza summer music festival in Chicago’s Grant Park have been treated to a new feature: a bright red Coca-Cola-branded pop-up roller skating rink, complete with a DJ booth, cubbies full of skates and plenty of frosty soda cans.
The marketing ploy was the brainchild of Coke and Live Nation Experiential, an in-house division of the global company that owns the festival. But the rink itself was built about a thousand miles south — in New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood — by Raven PMG, an under-the-radar Louisiana business that’s found success in the $130 billion and growing experiential marketing industry.
Operating out of a warehouse on Montegut Street, not far from where the train tracks cross St. Claude Avenue, Raven is a specialty fabrication company that designs, builds, ships and installs elaborate temporary structures used to promote products and brands at festivals, sporting events and conventions while giving attendees a shady place to sip a drink, use the bathroom or get a great view of whatever action is going on outside.
The private company, which was founded more than a decade ago but grew dramatically after the pandemic, oversees nearly 200 installations — or “experiences,” in industry parlance — annually for major events like Lollapalooza, the World Cup, Bonnaroo and Essence Festival of Culture. It works for roughly 100 brands or agencies, including Live Nation’s in-house team. It has about 70 full-time employees, and contractors swell that number to well over 100 during busy seasons…