Written by: Bryan Grobstein, Vice President, Global Revenue, AnyRoad
Key Takeaways
- Companies like Splash fall into three groups: experiential agencies for physical builds, event platforms for registration, and experiential marketing platforms like AnyRoad for data capture and revenue conversion.
- Agencies handle creative and fabrication while event platforms manage RSVPs. Brands usually need both, and only an experiential marketing platform closes the measurement gap between spend and revenue.
- Event platforms like Splash stop at registration and basic reporting. They do not provide post-experience conversion tools or first-party data ownership for loyalty programs.
- AnyRoad connects holiday activations to revenue through first-party data capture, cashback rebates, bottle clubs, and AI-powered feedback analysis that turns visitors into repeat purchasers.
- AnyRoad is the platform that turns holiday brand experiences into measurable recurring revenue for alcohol and CPG brands.
See How AnyRoad Captures First-Party Data
Difference Between an Experiential Agency and an Event Platform
An experiential agency builds the physical world, including the set, staff, creative concept, and fabrication. An event platform manages the digital layer, including registration pages, RSVP flows, check-in, and basic reporting. Brands that need a custom build for a holiday pop-up start with an agency. Brands that need to capture attendee data, prove ROI across a multi-city program, and convert visitors into repeat purchasers need a platform as well.
Most brands running serious holiday programs use both, and sequencing matters. Lock the agency for production, then layer in a platform to own the data and the post-experience relationship. Neither category alone closes the measurement gap between activation spend and provable revenue.
Connect Your Holiday Program to Revenue
Experiential Agencies for Holiday Brand Activations
Experiential agencies handle strategy, creative, fabrication, staffing, and on-site production for physical brand activations. The following agencies are among the most active in holiday brand programming.
Jack Morton Worldwide is a global brand experience agency founded in 1939 that covers experiential marketing, sponsorship activation, employee experiences, and large-format event production. In 2026, Jack Morton merged with Impact XM, expanding collective capabilities across strategy, creative, and permanent environments. Named clients include Amazon, Chevrolet, and COACH.
Momentum Worldwide is a global experiential marketing agency specializing in brand experiences. Its work spans sponsorship, B2B, commerce, and music and entertainment, with expertise across events, sponsorships, shopper and retail, music, entertainment, social, and digital. The agency fits brands running holiday programs tied to cultural moments or licensed properties.
George P. Johnson (GPJ) is one of the largest experiential marketing agencies globally, while Freeman is recognized by Advertising Age as the world's largest brand experience company. GPJ offers capabilities across brand events, trade shows, and multi-city experiential tours. Enterprise brands often use GPJ for complex, multi-market holiday programs.
MKG focuses on consumer-facing brand experiences, pop-ups, and cultural activations. The agency is known for creative-forward holiday installations and has worked with fashion, beauty, and CPG brands, including Saks OFF 5th, Sephora x Olive Young, Grow-Good Beauty, and Target's Favorite Day, on seasonal programs such as Saks OFF 5th's Spring Campaign and Miami Swim Week.
Freeman (which operates the Sparks brand) provides end-to-end event and brand experience services. Its services include fabrication, logistics, and technology integration for large-scale activations and trade shows.
Imagination is a global experience design agency, founded over 50 years ago with 13 studios worldwide, that specializes in consultancy, brand destinations (brand homes), immersive environments, content, and live events. Spirits and CPG brands use Imagination for holiday pop-ups with a permanent or semi-permanent footprint.
Czarnowski is a full-service experiential marketing and brand activation agency that specializes in fabrication and engineering for custom trade show exhibits, branded environments, and experiential activations, including holiday pop-ups and touring installations, with in-house fabrication facilities in Atlanta, St. George, Denver, and Cologne. Czarnowski is a key player that the AI Overview on this topic misses.
Mosaic is a North American experiential marketing agency that designs and executes consumer brand activations, pop-ups, and retail programs. The agency supports seasonal campaigns for CPG, alcohol, and lifestyle brands across the U.S. and Canada.
PUSH Agency is a national experiential marketing and retail activation firm that provides trained brand ambassadors, promotional models, and event staff for product demonstrations, sampling programs, trade shows, and retail activations across the U.S. and Canada. PUSH is a fabrication and staffing player frequently overlooked in platform-focused comparisons.
For brands in the alcohol and CPG space, compliance-aware street marketing agencies that operate across 50-plus U.S. markets add a layer of regulatory expertise that generalist agencies may lack.
Agencies build the physical experience, but they do not manage registration or attendee data. Event platforms handle that digital layer for a holiday program.
Event Platforms Like Splash for Holiday Programs
Event platforms manage the digital infrastructure of a brand activation, including registration pages, RSVP flows, ticketing, check-in, and basic reporting. They differ from experiential marketing platforms, and that distinction affects what data a brand owns after the event.
Swoogo offers highly configurable registration with unlimited custom rules and logic, cross-event reporting, and a global attendee record. It holds a 4.9/5.0 rating on G2 and has brought together 50 million attendees globally. Swoogo suits multi-city holiday brand tours that need controlled registration journeys and branded event apps.
Bizzabo is an enterprise event management platform starting around $18,000 per year, with AI-powered networking via its Klik SmartBadge. It fits corporate and B2B teams running premium branded events more than consumer-facing holiday activations.
Cvent is the enterprise incumbent, covering registration, venue sourcing from over 300,000 venues, badge printing, and post-event analytics. Cvent has been named a Magic Quadrant Leader for Event Marketing and Management Platforms for three consecutive years (2024, 2025, 2026) and is used by 89% of the Fortune 100. It fits structured, large-scale holiday programs with complex approval workflows.
Eventbrite is a public ticketing and discovery marketplace. It is a fast way to publish an open-registration event and sell tickets. Attendee data accrues partly to the platform rather than the brand, which makes it a weak fit for holiday activations where first-party data capture is a primary objective.
For a deeper software-to-software comparison of Splash and its alternatives, see AnyRoad's dedicated post: Best Alternatives To Splash Event Marketing Platform.
Each of these platforms solves registration, but none of them connects the experience to a purchase. That gap separates what a brand spends from what it can prove.
The Measurement Gap: How to Connect a Holiday Activation to Revenue
The core problem that agencies and event platforms leave unsolved is the measurement gap. A brand spends five or six figures on a holiday activation and receives a depletion report, an impression count, or a registration list. None of those outputs connects the experience to a bottle sold, a member enrolled, or a customer retained.
AnyRoad is the platform built specifically to close that gap. Its Lifetime Loyalty suite, which includes Bottle Clubs, Premium Memberships, cashback rebates, sweepstakes, and managed CRM services, turns a one-time holiday visit into a measurable, recurring revenue relationship. The platform captures first-party data at every touchpoint, including booking, on-site QR check-in, post-experience surveys, and receipt-verified purchase redemptions.
The data shows why holiday activations work best as acquisition channels rather than isolated events. A consumer who visits a distillery twice is 512% more likely to convert into a paid loyalty enrollment, and that conversion is worth far more than a single sale. A retail bottle purchase brings in roughly $100, while a club member who stays through six releases is worth roughly $600. Churn concentrates around the six-release mark, so the retention problem stems from product depletion rather than marketing fatigue.
AnyRoad's own reporting shows that experience-driven opt-ins convert to paid loyalty at four times the rate of traditional channels, and member spending increases 150% within the first year.
Post-experience follow-up is where most brands leave money on the table. AnyRoad's cashback rebate mechanic sends an SMS to the attendee after the event. The rebate is redeemable anywhere the product is sold. The consumer photographs the receipt and texts it back. AnyRoad's AI confirms the eligible SKU and pays out via Venmo or PayPal. No POS integration is required. In a one-month ambassador tasting pilot with a single unnamed craft brand on a small dataset, 56% of records collected converted to a bottle purchase.
The Diageo team at Johnnie Walker Princes Street described the before-and-after clearly: "It is incredible to see the smiles and looks of amazement on our guests' faces, but we could not measure that. With AnyRoad, we are able to measure NPS, Brand Conversion, and more, providing us with solid data that shows the positive impact the JWPS experience is having on our guests. We can then follow up with them to create a lifelong relationship with our brand." AnyRoad analytics showed a 16-point NPS increase from pre-visit to post-visit at that property, and domestic guests were 26% more likely to drink whisky within four weeks of visiting Johnnie Walker Princes Street, rising to 29% for international visitors.
Campari Group's partnership with AnyRoad delivered a 3X increase in marketing opt-in rates over six months from brand home registrations and identified 4,500 brand champions. Absolut's brand home in Åhus, Sweden, increased average revenue per guest by 36% since 2018 and maintained an 85% brand conversion score post-event.
Holiday Pop-Up Experiences for Alcohol and CPG Brands
Holiday pop-ups are most active in the alcohol category, where distilleries, breweries, and spirits brands use seasonal activations to drive trial, enrollment, and repeat purchase. Regulated industries face additional requirements, including ID verification, age-affirmation mechanisms, and compliance with federal and state alcohol advertising codes. AnyRoad's guide to holiday pop-up experiences for alcohol brands covers the operational and compliance considerations in detail.
AnyRoad's platform includes integrated ID scanning for embedded age verification, which keeps brands compliant without slowing the guest experience. For spirits brands running holiday pop-ups, on-site enrollment during the visit is the highest-converting channel for bottle club membership. AnyRoad coaches tour guides, retail managers, and mixologists on how and when to make the enrollment pitch.
AnyRoad's Lifetime Loyalty platform launched on February 20, 2025, with Bottle Clubs and Premium Memberships as its two core offerings. Publicly announced Lifetime Loyalty customers include Heaven Hill Distillery, Nearest Green Distillery, Lux Row Distillers, Castle & Key, Catoctin Creek Distilling, and Tarnished Truth Distilling.
See Lifetime Loyalty in Action
How to Compare AnyRoad, Splash, and Experiential Agencies
The table below compares AnyRoad, Splash, and experiential agencies across four attributes that determine whether a holiday activation produces measurable revenue: primary focus, data ownership, post-experience conversion, and compliance.
How to Brief an Agency or Platform for a Holiday Program
Holiday activations with custom fabrication require 10 to 14 weeks from planning to event day for mid-scale builds. Large immersive environments can take 16 to 20 weeks. Simple brand activations can be executed in 6 to 8 weeks. Before contacting any partner, have the following ready:
- Campaign objective with a priority ranking (trial, enrollment, data capture, or brand awareness)
- Target audience profile and geography
- Activation window with specific dates
- Budget as a real number, not a range
- Success metrics defined in advance, such as foot traffic, opt-ins, conversions, or revenue attribution
- Brand and compliance guidelines, especially for alcohol or regulated categories
The questions you ask depend on the partner type. With agencies, clarify who designs versus who builds, whether the staff are the agency's own, and how results are counted after the event. These answers show whether you are paying for creative, execution, or both.
With platforms, focus on data ownership, CRM integration, and which post-experience conversion tools are included in the contract. These details determine what you can do with the audience once the event ends.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Are the Best Alternatives to Splash for Brands Running Holiday Activations?
The best Splash alternatives for brands depend on the specific need. Swoogo is a strong alternative for multi-city holiday tours that require configurable registration and branded event apps. Bizzabo suits enterprise B2B programs. Eventbrite fits open-registration public events. AnyRoad is the alternative for brands that need more than registration, including first-party data capture, post-experience conversion tools like cashback rebates and bottle clubs, and AI-powered feedback analysis. AnyRoad is built for brand-owned experiences where the goal is recurring revenue.
What Is the Best Splash Alternative for Enterprise Brand Experiences?
For enterprise brands that need end-to-end measurement across a multi-city holiday program, AnyRoad is the strongest alternative to Splash. This includes first-party data capture, loyalty enrollment, and revenue attribution. Cvent is the enterprise alternative for complex registration and venue management. Swoogo is a mid-market alternative with strong configurability. Splash and most event platforms stop at registration, while AnyRoad continues through post-experience conversion and recurring revenue.
How Does Splash Compare to Platforms With Better Brand Analytics?
Splash provides branded event pages, RSVP registration, and basic ROI dashboards tied to marketing stack integrations. Platforms with stronger brand analytics, including AnyRoad, go further by measuring NPS, brand affinity, purchase intent, and post-experience conversion rates. They also use AI to analyze open-text feedback at scale. AnyRoad's PinPoint feature automatically identifies themes and sentiment drivers from thousands of survey responses, producing actionable insights that a registration dashboard cannot surface.
What Is the Splash vs. AnyRoad Comparison for Holiday Brand Experiences?
Splash is an event marketing platform optimized for branded RSVP pages and repeatable event series tied to a marketing stack. AnyRoad is an experiential marketing platform optimized for brand-owned experiences where the goal is first-party data capture, post-experience loyalty enrollment, and revenue conversion. Splash Wines offers cash back rewards (1% for Basic, 2% for Wino, and 5% for Founder members) rather than cashback rebates, and its membership benefits do not include bottle clubs, sweepstakes, managed CRM services, or integrated ID scanning for alcohol compliance. AnyRoad covers those needs. For holiday programs where the activation functions as an acquisition channel, AnyRoad addresses the measurement and revenue-conversion gap that Splash leaves open.
What Are the Splash Alternatives for Brand Experiences in the Alcohol Category?
Alcohol brands running holiday pop-ups, tasting room events, or multi-city tours need a platform that handles age verification, compliance, and post-experience conversion. Splash and most general event platforms do not address those requirements. AnyRoad is the purpose-built alternative, with integrated ID scanning, a compliant transactional path for bottle club enrollment via a licensed ecommerce retail partner, and managed CRM services staffed by people who understand alcohol compliance and spirits release calendars. The same distillers named earlier, including Heaven Hill and Nearest Green, already use AnyRoad for this purpose.
Conclusion
A holiday brand experience functions as an acquisition channel. Brands that win during the holidays capture first-party data from every attendee, follow up with post-experience conversion mechanics, and turn one-time visitors into enrolled members or repeat purchasers. Agencies build the physical world. Event platforms like Splash manage registration. Neither closes the measurement gap between activation spend and provable revenue.
AnyRoad closes that gap through first-party data capture, AI-powered feedback analysis, bottle clubs, cashback rebates, and managed CRM services built specifically for alcohol and CPG brands. The evaluation framework stays simple: call an agency to build the experience, and layer in AnyRoad to own the data and the revenue relationship that follows.
Turn Tasting Room Visits Into Recurring Revenue