Behind the Scenes at the GBK Kids' Choice Awards: What Celebrity Gift Lounges Teach Us About Events

If you've never been inside a celebrity gift lounge, here's how it works. Before a major awards show, sponsors and brands set up activations in a private suite where presenters, nominees, and other celebrities can interact with products and experiences in a relaxed, no-pressure setting. It's one of the most competitive environments in experiential marketing, because every brand in that room is fighting for attention from people who have seen everything.

Action Flipbooks was set up at the GBK Celebrity Gift Lounge for the Kids' Choice Awards, and Clevver TV was there covering it. Host Dana Ward interviewed several celebrities as they made their flipbooks, and the whole segment aired to Clevver's audience of millions.

In the segment, you can see Alex Heartman (the Red Samurai Ranger from Power Rangers Samurai), Stefanie Scott (Lexi Reed from Disney Channel's A.N.T. Farm), and Ashley Argota (Bucket & Skinner's Epic Adventures, iCarly, The Fosters) all making flipbooks and genuinely having a blast doing it. Dana Ward made one too, and her reaction was the same one we see from every guest: pure delight at watching yourself animate in the palm of your hand.

But beyond the celebrity name-drops, this event taught us some important lessons about what makes activations work, especially when the audience skews younger.

Why Flipbooks Win in a Room Full of Expensive Gifts

At a celebrity gift lounge, the swag is serious. Designer products, luxury goods, high-end tech. Celebrities walk through rooms full of things that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. And in that environment, the thing that consistently drew the most engagement was a 60-page animated flipbook that fits in the palm of your hand.

Why? Because flipbooks are an experience, not just a product. You don't just receive a flipbook. You create it. You step in front of the camera, do your thing for a few seconds, and then watch as a custom-printed keepsake comes to life right in front of you. In a room full of things to take home, the flipbook was the thing people actually wanted to do.

We've seen this play out at corporate events and brand activations with the same dynamic. You can set up a table of branded merch, and people will walk past it. But put a flipbook booth or a green screen video activation in the same space, and you'll have a line forming within minutes. Experiences beat stuff. Every time.

What Works for Kids Works for Everyone (And Vice Versa)

The Kids' Choice Awards audience is young, and the celebrities in attendance skewed toward that demographic. But here's what we've consistently found: the activations that work best for younger audiences aren't fundamentally different from the ones that work for adults. The format scales. The content changes, but the underlying principle is the same.

A 12-year-old making a flipbook at a school carnival and a VP of Marketing making one at a corporate conference both have the same reaction: they laugh, they show their friends, and they want to do it again. Our school event activations use the same professional equipment and the same production quality as our Fortune 500 corporate activations. Kids can tell the difference between a cheap photo booth and a premium experience just as fast as adults can.

This is why 360 photo booths have become so popular at bar and bat mitzvahs, proms, and school celebrations. The dramatic 4D immersive video looks incredible, it's endlessly shareable, and it gives young guests something they're genuinely excited about. Not a photo strip they'll throw away. A cinematic moment they'll post everywhere.

Media Coverage Follows Remarkable Experiences

Clevver TV didn't cover our activation because we asked them to. They covered it because it was the most visually interesting and engaging thing happening in the room. When a TV crew walks through a gift lounge looking for content, they're drawn to the same things as everyone else: energy, engagement, people having a visibly great time.

This is something brand marketers should think about carefully. If your goal is earned media, press coverage, or social sharing, the activation itself is the strategy. A remarkable experience generates its own publicity. People film it, post it, tag it, and talk about it because they want to, not because you asked them to.

Our green screen photo experiences and AI photo booths are designed with this exact principle in mind. When the output is genuinely impressive, guests share it without being prompted. When the experience looks exciting from the outside, onlookers line up to try it. The activation markets itself.

Bring Awards-Show Quality to Your Next Event

You don't need a celebrity gift lounge to create an activation that generates buzz. Whether you're planning a school event, a corporate party, a product launch, a trade show, or a private celebration, Action Flipbooks brings the same caliber of experience that drew cameras at the Kids' Choice Awards.

We serve clients across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and nationwide. From school events and bar and bat mitzvahs to corporate conferences and brand activations, every event gets Fortune 500-level quality.

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Action Flipbooks provides green screen video activations, flipbook photo booths, 360 photo booth experiences, AI photo booth rentals, and SpotMyPhotos event photography for corporate events, brand activations, school events, private parties, and experiential marketing campaigns nationwide. Past clients include Disney, Netflix, Google, LinkedIn, and Sony PlayStation. Learn more at actionflipbooks.com.

Behind the Scenes at the GBK Kids' Choice Awards: What Celebrity Gift Lounges Teach Us About Events