‘If you don’t evolve, you die’: NKPR’s IT House is the last TIFF gifting lounge standing after 20 years

Natasha Koifman, president and founder of philanthropic-minded publicity company NKPR, is celebrating the 20th anniversary of IT House, the agency’s signature gifting lounge held during the first four days of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

Past guests have included Ryan Reynolds, Jennifer Lopez, Daniel Craig, Scarlett Johansson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Orlando Bloom, Selena Gomez and Channing Tatum. This year will be equally star-studded. 

What is a gifting lounge or suite and who gets to go? It’s a one-stop pop-in spot for actors, directors, filmmakers, creators, media and industry leaders to learn about and receive freebies from some new and established brands. And no matter how successful a person might be, who doesn’t love freebies?

The IT House is different, though: It has a charitable element, Artists for Peace and Justice, of which Koifman is chair and co-founder, and…real live adoptable puppies on-site from Project Paws. 

Held at Q Tower Presentation Centre by Lifetime Developments and DiamondCorp, IT House is in partnership with PEOPLE, Entertainment Weekly and Shutterstock, and includes the IT House portrait and video studio, for which guests are welcome to pose with the pups.

Over the 20 years of IT House, the terminology may have evolved. Now the product demonstrations or try-on areas are called “brand activations” and some of the talent that swing by are “influencers” who know all about brand partnerships and promotions.

Koifman sat down with Karen Bliss at IT House to talk about the evolution of  her gifting lounge, where we learn that IT did not originally mean hot and happening, but something else entirely…

You’re the last standing gifting lounge. There used to be quite a few at TIFF time, but they’re all gone now.

It’s about evolution you have to evolve. If you don’t evolve, you die. When I started, gifting suites were all the rage and when you look 20 years later, it’s not a gifting suite that we have; we have a portrait studio and then we create experiences around that.

Twenty years ago, American awards shows always give gift bags to the artists and the actors, but it wasn’t happening here at the Juno Awards or the CCMAs, and neither were gifting suites before TIFF or other entertainment events. Did you look at what was going on in the U.S.  think, “I’m going to start one here?”

We did. That is actually is how it started. So 20 years ago, that was happening more and more, and then I had a client, who’s still my client today, she approached me and she said, “We want to be able to seed our product with celebrities. Toronto International Film Festival is one of the largest festivals in the world, even back then, I need you to help me do that.” And at the time, my agency was five years in at that point. And I was like, “We’ve never really done that before.” She said, “Well, if you don’t do it, I’m going to go somewhere where they do.” I was like, “Okay, I guess we’ll do it.” I just wanted to make sure that if we were creating a gifting lounge, that there was a charitable component to it. And that is what set us apart, what made us unique. So from the get-go, it was Big Brothers and Big Sisters that was our partner at the very beginning, and we always had a charitable partner ever since.

And so that first year that we did it. What we had said is, “You can get a gift bag, so as you’re walking around, get all of your things, but you can also donate a gift bag to Big Brothers and Big Sisters.” And so, all of these celebrities came through because they loved that idea, because every single gift bag was donated at their gala. It was like, Angelina Jolie donated this gift bag, so and so donated this gift bag. It just created this synergy and alignment between cause and cool products. And we’ve just continued that trajectory ever since. 

And of course, influencers did not exist at the time with paid promotions to wear or drink or use a product. 

Well, 20 years ago, we didn’t have social media. 

I guess it would have been hard, “how do I get this person to carry my bag or use my lipstick?” 

Then, the process was, celebrities would come in, we’d have a photographer taking photos of them, then we’d take those photos, and we’d push them to all the media. Now, everything’s in real time, so it’s very different.

And before there were gifting lounges or Perez Hilton and TMZ, would it be a fortuitous coincidence to see an actor wearing a certain brand in a tabloid photo and then everyone wants to wear that brand?

It was never a coincidence because all of that was happening on the back end. Nothing was accidental. So even the photos that you would take of a celebrity, usually that was also planned and strategized. So rarely were things coincidental, whereas these days it’s 100% not accidental. 

In the first few years, was it hard to get the actors and musicians, directors to come by? 

We always had a great relationship with the publicists in the studios. So, the first year that we did it, we hosted it at the old Four Seasons. And we called it the It House because it stood for International Trends. Now it stands for it’s the place. 

That’s what I thought it was.

Yeah, International Trends. And so, we had international brands from, you know, everywhere that we were able to sort of introduce talent to at the time. And some people thought it was for like, IT [information technology] because we were also the hub where media could file their stories, people could recharge their batteries, so we were whatever you wanted it to be.

If you needed IT, you could do that. If you wanted it to be more of a gifting lounge, we did that. And it’s just a place where people could chill and recharge.

Fast forward, 20 years later, it’s still that. You can feel it’s like the energy is still there. We still have a charitable component. Project Paws is our charity, and so is Artists for Peace and Justice. So we make a donation to both following the event. It’s a great way for us to be able to increase awareness of two causes that really matter to us.

And when you have puppies, that’s a good draw as well. The first thing I said when I walked in was “Where are the puppies?”

You can see [photographer/filmmaker] Caitlin Cronenberg in there. I bumped into her at the Women in Film event. And as I was leaving, I’m like, “Caitlin, tomorrow, puppies.” She’s like, “Yes, I’m there. I know.”

You tend to have a mix of established brands and introduce new ones.  Which ones have you seen grow over the years and are now here to stay? 

I curate the brands. And it’s by invitation only. We’re very particular about the brands that we take on in here because we want to make sure that we create the experience that our guests would be excited about. So Melanie Lyne is a Canadian [fashion] brand. We always love when celebrities come in that they have this opportunity to experience a really interesting Canadian brand. So, Melanie Lyne has been a partner of ours now for three or four years. And then we always try and have at least one or two brands that we introduce to the market, like Lo Kal.

They’re brand new. So we’re premiering the brand, which I love. 

They have such a great story to tell. Everything is under 500 calories and it’s sourced locally, which I love because right now you go to a restaurant, even if you go to a healthy restaurant, you don’t really know what you’re getting. And I’m still a big believer in counting calories because even a salad can be a thousand calories. And so I love the fact that they have this level of transparency. We also have Wellibites. I love candy, but I don’t want all the sugar. And they’re sugar-free. Swedish candy, but sugar-free. And then Sorrel has been a client of ours for eight years and they have this amazing shoe called the Ambler. It’s half boot, half shoe. I lived in a version of them last year. Anyway, love them.  And then for the puppies, we have e11ement’s [Hypochlorous Acid] cleaning for the pups. It was perfect for what we were doing today. 

And then of course, my husband [Eric Hendrikx]’s book. He’s launching Motorcycle Life on September 29. I’ve watched him work on it for the last two years. We did have a book [Echoes from Eden] that we launched last year, which he wrote with Jax Dasilva and Jane Goodall did the foreword. And this book, [actor] Norman Reedus did the foreword. I was home for some of the interviews that he did and I loved listening to him because everyone