Coachella marketing is over – but only for millennials

What happens when you fly 47 of the world’s biggest influencers to Coachella on private jets, put them all in a luxury compound and organize a series of A-list afterparties, with top-tier performers? Content. Lots of content.

That’s what Guess was hoping for when it set up its Coachella compound last weekend, the brand’s third and the biggest brand activation at the festival, stretching across 10 luxury mansions near the festival grounds. The goal was to promote its new Guess Jeans line, and in attendance were stars including Coachella performers Ice Spice and J Balvin; YouTube mega influencer Bretman Rock; and LA It Girls Devon Lee Carlson and influencer Stassie Karanikolaou (Kylie Jenner’s best friend). Guess account tags and related hashtags flooded Instagram and TikTok. “Bitch Guess Jeans really got me out here feeling like a Princess #GuessJeansCompound” wrote Bretman Rock in a journal entry, which he photographed and posted to his 18.9 million Instagram followers on Sunday.

It was a major investment for Guess, the 43-year-old brand trying to reach a new, younger demographic. “What, this? It was cheap!” jokes Nicolai Marciano, the 29-year-old Guess scion who took the helm as chief new business development officer at the company in 2023. But he says the return is “immeasurable” with each of the talents posting constant content for three days straight, driving boosted social awareness for the brand and becoming long-term ambassadors, both organically and in a paid capacity.

“You can invite someone to a branded event somewhere and it’s a cocktail or a party for an hour or two. Here, the talent are living and experiencing Guess Jeans the entire weekend of Coachella. It’s basically the best campaign possible,” says Marciano.

While Guess went all out, others have questioned if Coachella is losing its allure. Coachella ticket sales slowed down this year, with weekend two still not sold out at the time of writing. And last year, as major celebrities toned down their festival outfits (Hailey Bieber wore a white tank top and jeans), experts questioned the festival’s fashion influence going forward.

Revolve, the king of influencer marketing, scaled back its annual Coachella-adjacent Revolve Festival this year to just one day with 1,200 attendees, compared with its usual 5,000-capacity, two-day event, which chief brand officer Raissa Gerona says is in part to save budget for other activations throughout the year, like the upcoming Miami Grand Prix. Last year, Revolve drove $6 million in media impact value, according to Launchmetrics, making it the most impactful brand activation, followed by Adidas’s in-festival pop up and H&M’s Coachella brunch. Generally, brands measure the success of Coachella activations with social impressions and engagement, press activity around their events and feedback from attendees.

“Every year that we finish, I consider whether we have to do it again,” says Gerona. “But Coachella isn’t going away. I think there might just be a little bit of a shift of demographic.”

Enter Coachella’s Gen Z era.

A shift in demographic

Coachella organisers Golden Voice have prioritised fresh talent on the line up in recent years, including international talent like K-pop stars Blackpink and Bad Bunny in 2023, and this year Gen Z favourites like Reneé Rapp, Ice Spice and Doja Cat. For brands, this creates an opportunity to use Coachella to reach Gen Z. Alongside Guess, companies like Pinterest, YouTube and American Express, invested in the festival more than ever for 2024 in order to tap its growing Gen Z audience.

Rather than its usual obsession with millennial influencers, prominent on Instagram, Revolve pivoted this year to include TikTok talent for the first time, including TikTok mega-influencer Vinnie Hacker. “It’s about being relevant to the next generation,” says Gerona.

TikTok was also a priority at the Guess compound, after the success of Alix Earle’s attendance last year. Her content, all tagging Guess, drove tens of millions of views across the weekend for the brand on TikTok. For this year, the compound featured a TikTok house, including UK-based stars like Madeline Argy and Olivia Neill. “We leaned into TikTok heavier this year because it resonates so well with the younger generation,” says Marciano. “This whole week is about content. And TikTok content has a much higher level of consumption from Guess Jeans’s potential customers.”

Quality over quantity

Forty per cent of Pinterest users are Gen Z, and one in four of the platform’s weekly users are planning to attend a festival this year, says Sara Pollack, VP and global head of consumer marketing at Pinterest. Pinterest set up an experiential space in the festival, where people could manifest their dreams on a giant mirror and have a styling session or makeover that corresponds with Coachella trends that the platform predicted, from Western Gothic, bow stacking, 2014 fashion and Lana Del Rey core. “We’ve been seeing tens of millions of searches for festival outfit trends, hair and makeup on Pinterest this year, so we wanted to lean into festivals this time,” says Pollack. While ticket sales may have slowed, on Pinterest, search volume around Coachella is higher than for any other music festival.

Amex also created a Gen Z focused activation, riffing on the TikTok theme “delulu” (delusional) in collaboration with Gen Z artist Reneé Rapp. Like Pinterest, visitors could enter a manifestation room, with Rapp delivering a “Reneé’s reading” of their fortune, via one of a series of pre-recorded videos. Amex card members could also access exclusive Reneé Rapp and Tyler the Creator merch mystery boxes at the pop-up.

Even if festival fashion has toned down, for Guess this year, it’s benefiting from the more casual vibe. All talents staying on the compound wore Guess Jeans the whole Coachella weekend, which is focused on classic denim, tanks, T-shirts and Coachella branded varsity jackets.

For Revolve’s Gerona, she feels festival style has evolved to be more multi-faceted. “I think in times past, there was one kind of festival fashion. The trend before was crochet everything,” she says. “But after the pandemic, people came out thinking, what do we want to wear? It’s not just one look anymore. It’s like everybody has their different take on what festival dressing is.” Revolve dressed attending talents in many different styles, from western to more classic, and featured corresponding edits on its site.

For any brand activating at Coachella, press and impressions are the top priority. But those working with talent also see it as a relationship-building exercise. Guess was intent that if its talents “didn’t have to lift a finger” they’d have a better experience and post more organic content.

And for Marciano, ticket sales at the festival don’t affect the end goal of the Guess compound: To drive brand reach on social media, way beyond the festival gates. Guess held two A-list parties over Coachella Weekend 1 for just 300 people in one of the houses on the compound. Stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Billie Eilish, Justin and Hailey Bieber and Robert Pattinson attended one or both the parties. Anderson Paak and Kaytranada performed on Friday, followed by Metro Boomin on Sunday.

“People might expect us to do a 3,000-person party. But it’s not about that,” says Marciano. “Coachella is very much about having the right people and creating a star studded event. It’s quality over quantity. We want to show the world’s top talents what we’re about.”

Source: Vogue Business