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Poorly planned Carlsberg event bombs

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Carlsberg's first-in-Hong Kong "Where's the Party" event last Saturday hosted by Edison Chen and Kevin Poon's company, CLOT, was perhaps one of the worst corporate events I have been to.A harsh thing to say? Perhaps. But let me explain.The spotlight feature of the evening - a chance to win an all expenses paid trip to Europe's "Where's the Party" - fell through 45 minutes into the party.At 8 p.m, guests were taken from the location suggested on the invitation, Kwun Tong Pier, to a warehouse a few blocks down the street. The organisers even tried to add to the mystery by blind-folding guests in a game on the bus.Admittedly, the site was somewhat well-designed: graffiti covered the walls, the fog machine was on full blast and generous beer stations hovered at almost every corner offering two flavours of Carlsbergs.In a corner was a small table with party props like led-lit plastic jewellery and gigantic glasses. But each prop had less than 10 items, and the table was wedged in a tiny corner.Through various games on the site - as well as the one on the bus - attendees can win tokens to six vending machines containing the ticket to the European party destination.Not only were the games extremely elementary - they were variations of coin toss and pin the tail on the donkey - they were also clumped into the same area as the vending machines, some of which were malfunctioned and nobody on site knew how to fix.The cherry on top? The coins ran out by 9:15 - 45 minutes into the party - and winning guests were awarded Carlsberg entrance stickers in replacement with an explanation of "we only had enough coins for people who arrived early".UPDATE:Carlsberg marketing executive Lois Wan has responded to the story saying that the brand "wanted the party space to be crowded" but will set up a formal process to improve the events."The main point is our beer, and there were a lot of other entertainment in the venue, like the unlimited free-flow of beer, as well as deejays, stars and celebrity performances," she said."For the games, waiting is a must."When asked about the distribution of the coins, Wan said that it was a case of miscommunication, due to the loud music, and that coins were only "on hold" because the vending machines needed refilling and only stopped full operation at 11 p.m, when all the prizes were gone.A winner to Europe was also announced that evening.[gallery ids="18054,18055,18056,18057,18058"]

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