The Party That Never Was

Today we should have been commemorating 75 years since VE Day with a weekend of activities across the three spaces of our 1940s Soho bar Cahoots, as put in the press release it was to be:

A swinging street party and late-night knees-up. 

The Cahoots Scoundrels have plotted a raft of ‘40s festivities stretching across all three Cahoots spaces – Ticket Hall, Control Room and Underground – extending into the neighbouring streets, with the aim of recreating the iconic scenes from London’s jubilant VE Day parties, complete with a street picnic feast, swing dance sessions, live music and much more mischief.

However, of course, that will now not be happening, but I am very proud of the plans we put in place, it felt like a fitting way to mark such an incredible event. So rather than it goes to waste, I am sharing it as firstly I am proud of it but secondly it's a good example of an event fitting a brand perfectly and the level of content/activity needed.

Context: Cahoots is potentially our most popular brand in the group, until late last year it was just one underground bar off Carnaby Street, Soho, but we have since expanded it to at least double in size, so it now comprises the original underground station, a newly discovered control room and a ticket hall now repurposed as a cocktail bar. Since the very first conversations about building this brand, we have been careful to pitch it as post-second world war but very much keeping the resilient spirit of the blitz alive, making the most of things during tough times.

I think in these articles I am keen to briefly focus on what our motivation is for an activity. It’s almost always the case that we start with:

• Revenue generating
• Exceeding our current guest's expectations
• Introducing new markets to our brand
• Producing PR coverage within our target media list for that brand (I have no doubt given the thought that went into this event, the content planned and critically with PR the timing of us organising this event, we would have got incredible PR coverage)
• Generating social media content (both for us and for guests/consumers)
• Engaging the teams (both in-venue and support office-based)

However I think with this activation, these weren’t in the forefront of our mind. It’s worth saying we started the initial plans for this activation about 9 months ago but its been in the back of our minds for much longer than that. We have never wanted to glamorise war, that’s been a central consideration in all we do, and a good reason why we pitched the venue as post-second world war. But the brand is really about that blitz spirit which existed beyond the war, about the resilience shown by so many people (which feels timely right now), so this celebration was going to champion that spirit. I genuinely believe this would have been the best VE Day celebration in Soho and one of the best in London, given how much thought we had put into it. 

The main thing we wanted to achieve was to mark this special day in an appropriate way, a big part of which was making a lot of money for the Dame Vera Lynn’s Children's charity (a charity we have supported for around five years I think), principally through selling our iconic Vera Lynn cocktail (our best seller) and the majority of the sale going to the charity.

If you search the Cahoots locations on Instagram you will see that about 10% of posts by guests in Cahoots (our most Instagrammed location) will be of this drink!

The basic plan for today (Friday 8th May, 2020):

• The road was hopefully going to be closed with the space set-up with outdoor trestle picnic tables, where passers-by can buy ‘40s lunchboxes to eat in or takeaway.
• The street outside Cahoots was to have a vintage war-time vehicle display on Kingly Street, including a replica army Jeep, and military Royal Enfield motorbikes, encouraging passers-by to capture their VE Day celebratory moment. 
• On the other side of the bar we were extending the Newsagents store at the rear of the Ticket Hall and transforming it into a bustling mini marketplace. Guests could enjoy a boozy jelly and ice cream stall, selling our notorious Negroni-flavoured ice-creations, to tempt sweet-toothed wanderers into the station and join the celebrations.
• Throughout the day guests could enjoy victory rolls hairstylists, use complimentary face painters and interact with actors in uniform of the time.
• Post lunch we would put on a 1940s swing dance lesson with our friends from Swing Dance UK. 

• Followed by live music of the period from with a singer and piano encouraging a street singalong as would have happened in many VE Day celebrations
• Around 3pm a bagpiper would have been playing Battle’s O’er from the Ticket Hall and the specially composed tune VE 75 Years, and The Nation’s Toast to the Heroes of World War 2 which signifies 75 years exactly since war was declared over. 
• Followed by another set from our singer and then on to another swing dance lesson.
• Next up in the late afternoon/early evening we had one of our resident DJ’s playing an electro swing kind of set from a Jeep befitting of the era.

• No VE Day celebration can avoid having a Town Cryer! The Cry for Peace Around the World and Ringing out for Peace. At this point, it was time to move inside where we would have live music in all the spaces of the bar which had been specifically decorated for the whole weekend 

It’s incredibly disappointing we can’t be together to celebrate this historic event in such a fitting way at Cahoots but I am hopeful when back open we can put some of these ideas in place for other events. I think the main takeaway from this event is whatever your brand is there will be certain events it can really suit and there is an opportunity to embrace these events, our only brand this would have worked for is Cahoots but there are other examples of events that are perfectly tailored to brands.

In terms of the level of detail we would have gone too in theming this event, I think this video of our first birthday for Cahoots on HMS Belfast is a good inspiration: