The Coachella Valley Festival is an annual music and arts festival held at the Empire Polo Club, in the Inland Empire's Coachella Valley in the Colorado Desert of California. Dubbed “The Super Bowl of Instagram Advertising”, Coachella is a melting pot of experiential marketing, exclusive parties, and branded events that everyone wants to be part of. Coachella has become a place where creativity and music merge with influencer marketing and Instagram showreels. This year, we saw some great marketing trends pop up on Instagram from Coachella’s sponsors, brand party hosts, influencers and attendees.
So why do brands want to be seen at Coachella? Well almost 100,000 people walk through the gates of Coachella each day of the festival. And a huge portion of those attendees fit nicely within the millennial age bracket, with a higher than average spending power. And with a reputation of being ‘the place to be seen’ as the festival season kicks off, Coachella ticket holders are more than happy to share their experience online — at the time of this blog post, there are 4.7 million posts on Instagram tagged with #coachella. With Instagram marketing at Coachella, you’re able to reach out to an audience that physically can’t be there, but want to enjoy living out the experience through social media — by creating compelling Instagram content during the event, you’re able to convincingly market, and sell your product by tapping into a physically absent, but highly engaged audience!
A presence at Coachella, whether that’s being an event sponsor, hosting exclusive influencer parties, or launching Coachella-based product lines, is a golden ticket opportunity for brand exposure and activation. Of course, not every brand can afford a highly coveted spot at Coachella, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take inspiration from their exclusive events and activation efforts! We’ve rounded up our favourite Coachella trends from 2019, so take note for future collaborations, events and social inspiration...
Coachella Trend #1: Photo and Video Collages
StoryLuxe, a luxury photo templates app, jumped on the Coachella bandwagon by creating cute Instagram photo, video and story templates especially for Coachella in collaboration with Revolve, that allowed festival goers to capture multiple memories at once, to post on their social media feeds
For both photos and videos, we’re expecting to see this collage trend trickle into the Instagram landscape for the rest of 2019, so if you haven’t already started experimenting with your Instagram Stories designs, or using templates to share your content, now’s the time!
Coachella Trend #2: Dedicated Spaces
Apart from what stage you need to be at for each performer, the main thing on a Coachella attendee’s mind is getting the best shot for Instagram, and that’s why brands are going above and beyond to provide the perfect backdrop, beyond the iconic Coachella Ferris wheel! Some brands this year worked their aesthetic both inside and outside of the festival grounds to help promote their brand, and help their followers get the shot! For example,YSL created a beauty pop up site that mimiced a gas station where people could play with a makeup vending machines and try on different YSL beauty looks with its virtual mirror! As well as this, Instagram pulled out all the stops with its Desert Chill House! For the first time ever, Instagram hosted its own branded house partnering with artist D’ana Nunez, the invite-only Instagram Desert Chill House, was the place to be!
Coachella Trend #3: Experiential Marketing
Experiential marketing is a quickly growing trend for brands and business looking to expand their audience, but at Coachella, hosting an experiential event is key! The theory behind experiential marketing is when you promote or market a product through experiences that engage the customer, it creates an emotional attachment to the product or service, so you gain a more loyal following. From #RevolveFestival hosting the biggest party outside of Coachella, to the NYX and Pantene beauty lounges, themed tents like Absolut Planet and Heineken House, there are branded experiences all over the valley that are the perfect places to capture insta-worthy content!
TBP x
