Ragtrader asks Peta + Jain marketing and PR manager Lauren Pendergast to take readers behind the marketing strategy for Coachella, from influencer marketing to dedicated product ranges.
At Peta + Jain, we were excited to see the return of Coachella this year.
As an Australian brand, Coachella and our LA pre-Coachella gifting event gave us access to celebrities and influencers, with a reach that extends far beyond the festival grounds.
The world could see their outfits in real-time through Instagram and TikTok, amplifying our brand, globally.
Coachella is the most anticipated fashion event of the festival season and the outfits are just as important as the performances. Trends for the rest of the year’s festival fashion are often dictated by the outfits worn by celebrities and influencers.
Having a focus on festivals has been something we've been doing for many years in Australia, so an international major music festival was the next step.
We officially launched into the US market 12 months ago and through our appointed agency have been actively building our brand awareness and profile.
As part of strategy for the festival, it made sense for us as a brand to be present on the ground and maximise the opportunity to be amongst this gathering of influencers, taste makers, media and brands.
We saw the festival as an unmissable opportunity for market research. We returned with a clear idea of what’s trending in festival fashion, who is wearing our brand and which styles were the most popular.
For us, no matter the campaign, the most important strategy is to have a customer-centric objective for what we want to achieve across socials and marketing.
We released our first dedicated festival collection, DESSERT DISCO, six weeks prior to the festival and saw an uplift in traffic in the US of 70% and Australia of 35%. Sales overall during the festival period increased by 50%.
Content is a huge focus for us as it is key to connecting with our core consumers. We ran multiple social media giveaways in the lead up to Coachella to create engaging content for our customers.
To amplify the collection, In the lead up to and during the festival, we worked on a structured influencer campaign to maximise visibility across social channels.
We activated through gifting, paid partnerships and event attendance.
Our involvement in a multi-branded pre-Coachella gifting event in LA proved successful in getting our product in the right hands prior to the festival. Guests in attendance had a combined IG following of over 422.7 million and resulted in over 200 placements before the festival kicked off.
The festival proved to be one of the most popular calendar events for influencers and celebrities and the return of Coachella allowed us to create fun and engaging content with a global appeal. Our customers were tuning into the content to get the latest styles from Coachella.
The results from our first experience of Coachella have cemented it as a key date in our marketing calendar and the learnings from being on the ground have provided us with the insight on how we can build on this as festivals make their return in Australia and for our return to Coachella in 2023.