Experiential & Events

Experiential work has been the connective tissue of Zane's career for over two decades. Long before luxury brands entered the picture, he was designing and executing brand activations, product launches, and trade-facing programs for the largest spirits portfolios in the world, including Diageo, Campari Group, Pernod Ricard, and Brown-Forman, alongside the dozens of individual brands within them. Many of those programs ran across multiple portfolios at once, with competing brands sharing the same event footprint and Zane responsible for the creative integrity of each.
From 2013 through 2015 he led beverage programs at The McKittrick Hotel, the iconic immersive venue in Manhattan that houses Sleep No More, The Heath, and Gallow Green, where the work demanded a constant blending of theatrical world building, hospitality craft, and operational precision.
In 2011 he worked with Lucent Dossier Experience, the Los Angeles based experiential circus and performance troupe, conceptualizing acts, fabricating set pieces and props, and performing on stage as part of their productions.
This work has taken him into hotels, festivals, conventions, retail accounts, on-premise programs, and private events across the country and internationally, and has built relationships across the industry that span generations of bartenders, brand teams, and distribution partners. The through line has always been the same: design the experience around what the brand actually needs to communicate, and build it so the people in the room remember it.
More recently, Zane brought that same approach to the luxury sector through his role as Chief Creative Operator at The Cup Bearer, where he led creative on activations for fashion houses, watchmakers, technology companies, and financial institutions. Events under his direction have ranged from deeply personal ten person private experiences to large scale productions of ten thousand guests. The unifying standard across all of it, spirits and luxury alike, is the highest level of craft, design, and service, executed without compromise. Zane now serves on The Cup Bearer's board in an advisory capacity.