My Barilla Piccolini House Party

I hosted a Barilla Piccolini House Party this weekend.

What is a House Party? Well, companies spend billions of dollars every day marketing their products consumers, many of whom are ignoring the messages. Consumers are bored. We want excitement. This means that companies have to constantly come up with creative ways to market their products in order to appeal to a new generation that is accustomed to using TiVO to forward through the ads that these companies invest so much in. A House Party is a new, creative marketing technique that benefits, rather than bores consumers. If you regularly have friends over for dinner and you like to get free stuff, this will probably appeal to you. This is how it works…you sign up on the House Party site and apply to host a party (it’s free). You then fill out an online questionnaire and wait a couple of weeks for an e-mail indicating whether or not you have been accepted as a host.

I applied to host a Barilla Piccolini House Party and was accepted, along with 1050 other hosts (16,000 had applied). I was then set up with my own House Party website where I could invite my friends, post photos, download recipes and images for party favor bags and post comments on a forum. A few days later in the mail, I received a box of free goodies from the sponsor (Barilla). I then held my party on the same night as the other 1050 families, in effect, creating a big, exciting national party. We had a great time and everyone enjoyed their free gifts from Barilla.

It’s win/win marketing. The company gets a completely attentive audience who is keeping their product top of mind during before, during and after the party. The consumer gets to enjoy lots of free stuff.

Check out House Party to host a party of your own! There are usually several House Parties to choose from involving products ranging from chocolate to cars, toys, cheese, cleaning products and more.

The free goodie box contained: 2 boxes of Barilla Piccolini Pasta, an Andrea Bocelli CD, a Frommers 2008 Italy Book, 8 Mealtime Magic Books, 8 stress balls, 8 timers, a bottle opener, a set of silver wine glass charms, a cooking magazine, recipes and many coupons.