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In late June, beauty brand Refy flew eight customers to Mallorca, Spain. The trip entailed a Refy-branded beach club, dinners, gifts and creative director Jess Hunt hosting customers at her favourite spots around the island while teaching the girls her go-to beauty regimen.
Just don’t call it an influencer trip. The lavish brand adventures that bring together groups of online celebrities — individually wielding massive follower counts — have fallen out of fashion, as onlookers grumble and grouse over the expensive gifts, first-class flights and all-around flagrant displays of wealth. Tarte’s 2023 trip to Dubai received online backlash for being “tone-deaf”. And while skincare company Topicals was able to pull off a well-received influencer trip to Ghana earlier this year, it’s an increasingly tricky feat for brands to execute, as income inequality widens and the cost of living soars.
While the influencer trip isn’t dead, it is evolving into the more grassroot, customer-centric ‘community’ trip, like the one Refy hosted. Refy didn’t select influencers with large built-in platforms to plug and promote their products, instead opting to rally up candidates for the trip via an online application process utilising Instagram’s broadcast channel group chat. Hunt herself interacted and befriended already-avid customers of the brand through sending messages to members in the Refy brand channel, including videos, voice memos and emojis. The mission of the trip was to further elevate brand loyalty through developing in-person camaraderie.
Emerging African skincare brand 54 Thrones took a direct hit at the influencer trip concept this summer when launching its “anti-brand trip”. Once customers had successfully completed the social media challenge set by the brand, seven were chosen to become brand ambassadors and attend a trip to Essence Festival in New Orleans.
“Consumers, especially Gen Z, are increasingly disillusioned with brands sending wealthy influencers on extravagant trips under the guise of ‘brand awareness’. In a time of financial strain, this feels out of touch,” says creative strategist and content creator Denée Seaton, who went viral on TikTok, garnering almost 500,000 views, for expressing the branding strategy shift we’re seeing among brands and influencers alike.
Although this marketing method doesn’t prove an inherent return on investment (ROI), the goalpost is shifting as brands attempt to generate relatability and customer loyalty. While Hunt says there was “no commercial motive” behind the Refy trip, Seaton believes these kinds of brand moves are part of a longer term strategy. “The lifetime value of a customer, strengthened by strong community connections, is far greater in today’s market, where the barrier to entry for starting a business is much lower,” says Seaton.
Often, when brands put on trips with big-name influencers, they want to rapidly cultivate online virality that is aspirational rather than relatable for customers. The move towards taking everyday customers on these trips signals that brands are increasingly investing in building their customer base internally. Last year, Tarte reprioritised and focused on community trips by inviting 13 customers (and their plus ones), who the brand has dubbed as ‘Tartelettes’, to New York for a two-night stay at The Plaza Hotel, sunset helicopter rides, a tour around the city and even concert tickets to watch Beyoncé perform with makeovers provided beforehand. In March, Topicals hosted a trip to Megève, the French ski resort, with 20 guests that included both influencers and customers.
“In an era where niche content and interests reign supreme, aligning with communities is the most valuable asset a business can have. Brands should invest in building a community to help customers connect with like-minded people and create a sense of belonging. Consider the power of ‘collective effervescence’, the energy and harmony felt when coming together around a shared purpose, and invest in IRL experiences that bring core customers together to create loyalty,” says Cassandra Napoli, senior trend strategist at WGSN.
These customer trips — rather than the influencer voyages of the past — still offer a lift online. Refy says that its Instagram broadcast channel saw a 250 per cent increase in engagement since the brand started posting about the Mallorca trip.
This method of community-based brand marketing is also something influencers can carry out themselves if they have enough of a platform to do so. Fashion influencer and entrepreneur Alyssa Coscarelli recently put on a 12-person trip to Copenhagen, which included collaboration with eponymous label Stine Goya and vintage store Collect23. Each girl who went on the trip was selected based on whoever signed up first, citing the difficulty to make in-person friendships as a reason why so many were interested in participating.
Coscarelli referred to the trip as a fashion-focused “retreat” that she was able to execute in collaboration with travel company Dharma, “[which] essentially offered to handle all of the logistics like hotel bookings and activities under the requirement that I had to gage legitimate interest from my followers”, she says. Coscarelli carried out an online poll among her followers, who voted Cophenhagen to be the destination of choice. For the trip, everything was included in pricing except for lunches, and the retreat cost ranged from $2,800 to $3,500.
On the trip, Coscarelli put together goodie bags for all of her guests and brought them to tour the Stine Goya showroom. “Stine herself spoke to us, got to know all the girls, and had breakfast [with us],” she shares. At the same time, at vintage store Collect23, Coscarelli “wanted to provide the type of shopping experiences I really like to have when I travel”. The entire group had a shopping appointment at the store, where owner Julie Blichfeld put out wine, refreshments and made her best pieces readily available for the girls to peruse and buy.
“It speaks to the underconsumption-core trend we’re seeing right now. I would rather spend my money on an experience where I’m going to meet new people and create core memories with people, [making] new friends with people from around the world,” says Coscarelli. “To me, that’s money well spent.”
Brands and influencers are spearheading this marketing shift to showcase lifestyle ethos through customers rather than displaying yet another opportunity given to those already platformed. “Community marketing is rooted in authentic connections. It prioritises deep relationships over quick ROI metrics. The focus shifts to questions like: how can we bring our most loyal consumers together? and how can we demonstrate that we see and value them?” says Seaton.
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