How to Sell Something that Doesn’t Exist Yet

May 14

There's a pattern I see with experiential brands that I want to talk about.

They've got a brand new seasonal experience and they freeze. Why? Because they don't have photos yet. They hold back on pre-event marketing, delay media outreach, and quietly wait until they "have something to show."

This is the exact moment where the best PR strategies for grand opening events get tossed aside because brands convince themselves they need to wait. If you're holding back until the photographer delivers the gallery, you've already lost momentum.

We saw exactly how powerful taking up space early can be with two big event media relations services we ran: the Utah Tulip Festival and Tulip Valley Farms.

Selling the Future: Utah Tulip Festival

Down in southern Utah County, the family behind Glen Ray's Corn Maze made a bold move and traded their fall pumpkins for spring petals. They introduced a brand new seasonal tulip field at Leland Legacy Farm, planted a quarter of a million tulips, and built a totally hands-on , u-pick field where guests could literally walk into the color.

The problem was we had ZERO photos of the fields in bloom, not a single one to work with.

So our strategy had to shift, and this is where experiential marketing and PR really earns its keep. Instead of leaning on past pictures to do the heavy lifting, we built something else: a clear, compelling picture of the experience in people's minds. We didn't focus on what it looked like; we focused on what it would feel like to be there.

Photo Credit: Last Chance Photography Venue: Utah Tulip Festival

We leaned hard into descriptive storytelling so people could imagine the moment, and we positioned the festival as a new spring ritual instead of just another event. We tapped into the curiosity of "something new is coming to Utah" and built early audience ownership for the people who wanted to be the first to discover it. As a result, Utah Tulip Festival pre-sold about $10k in tickets!

And the hype was wild. The festival was so successful that they made enough money to pay back their entire investment of 250,000 bulbs, and they even had funds left over for next year. That's what the best PR strategies for grand opening events actually look like: real numbers, real outcomes.

Same Approach, Different Problem: Tulip Valley Farms

Up in Washington, we partnered with Tulip Valley Farms, a family-owned farm run by Andrew Miller, a colorblind tulip farmer, and his wife Holly. They're the only u-pick field featured in the famous Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, so we needed to differentiate them as the ultimate immersive experience. This is the heart of experiential marketing and PR. ou're not just promoting an event. You're selling a feeling people want to be part of.

But right at the start of their only revenue-generating month in 2025, the bottom started falling out of the broader industry. International tariffs hit, Canadian boycotts severely impacted local tourism, and neighboring farms saw revenue losses ranging from 20% all the way to 52%.

We weren't about to wait around and see what would happen, so we got aggressive with our event media relations services and secured over 40 earned media placements in three months, including top-tier spots in Travel + Leisure and The New York Times before the festival even started. The tourism boards completely converted, which drove huge local word-of-mouth right when other farms were watching their numbers tank.

The 2025 results spoke for themselves. While competitors were bleeding revenue, Tulip Valley Farms hit a 35% increase in revenue and sold over 1,000 additional tickets compared to the previous year.

So in 2026, we doubled down. The tourism boards converted again, but this time we layered in influencers too. The top-tier press also fed directly into ChatGPT, which in turn helped drive ticket purchases for the farm and resulted in 81,000 website visits in a single month. Their total revenue was up 29% over 2025. Night Bloom tickets and revenue doubled, and overall, Tulip Valley Farms sold more of the higher-priced u-pick tickets. They also nearly broke even on the cost of paying the illustrator for their book, which was a huge win.

The Lesson

Storytelling is key. It's the anticipation, the curiosity, the way you make people imagine themselves in the experience before it even exists. That's what gets them to actually show up. Photos catch up eventually, but the story has to come first. That's what good event media relations, along with experiential marketing and PR, really come down to.

So if you've been sitting on your hands waiting for everything to be perfectly polished before you start talking about it, please stop. Start now and build the hype before you have the proof. The best PR strategies for grand opening events don't wait on the photographer, and neither should you.