of the United Kingdom’s capitol city.
The global Experience Economy is seeing a new wave of growth as consumers seek refuge from their digital screens. This sector, which focuses on premium live events, entertainment, and other immersive experiences, has surpassed $1 trillion in value and is seeing even greater demand in the live event and festival circuit.Â
Global tourism and travel play a central role in this movement, and are expected to outpace general economic growth this year, accounting for nearly 10% of global GDP. US travel growth alone is expected to reach $1.37 trillion this year. Despite international travel to the US flailing, domestic travel is thriving: it now accounts for 87% of total revenue and has officially returned to 2019 inflation-adjusted levels.Â
Several emotional, psychological, and cultural factors play into this new economy:Â
- Escape from digital immersion: Mastercard found that European consumers are suffering from digital deluge. They’re breaking free from algorithmic entrancement and, in turn, 60% are prioritizing their spending on offline experiences.
- FOMO: Ironically, in-person cultural events are breeding grounds for social media content creation. This creates a powerful digital ripple effect that creates a mass-scale “fear of missing out.” More than half of Americans say they are more likely to spend on dining, travel, and in-person entertainment because of this FOMO. The demographic most likely to do this is Gen Z: 86% admit that they overspend on live events because they don’t want to miss out.
- Community belonging: Although most consumers, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, are exploring and building their interests online, 95% are looking to extend them to in-real-life moments. Eventbrite calls these environments “Fourth Spaces,” and they can be massive in scale, like a Coachella, or more intimate, niche events. The connecting point is that consumers are using these spaces to foster community and feel a more authentic sense of belonging.Â
The research points to a major opportunity for brands. When consumers feel immersed in a moment and truly connected to the people and environment, they are more likely to engage with all aspects of a space. Brand activations at events can drive 4x higher recall than digital ads, and some consumers (again, Gen Z) are more likely to overspend at these events because it’s simply “part of the experience.”Â
Music festivals like Coachella are uniquely effective because attendees are present, engaged, and receptive. They’re likely attending the festival because they’re a fan of one or several acts, which makes their adrenaline and dopamine escalate. There’s an innate passion and excitement tethered to the experience, and when these feelings brew, the YOLO mentality emerges. Post-event, that feeling continues, with earned media generating a powerful ripple effect. Analysts tracking Coachella 2026 noted that brand activations during Weekend One alone generated an estimated $870 million in Media Impact Value, making it one of the highest-concentration brand marketing environments in the world.
That is why, despite the cost of participation increasing year over year, Coachella remains the ultimate blueprint for experiences across live music, sporting events, and even tech conferences.
But brands are no longer simply buying event sponsorships and logo placements; they’re buying access to experiences that have captive audiences and cultural legitimacy. Dollars are flowing into festivals because they offer the visibility, the real estate, and the open creative palate for brands to create engaging, even unexpected spaces that consumers will love. And it’s not just the obvious cast of characters, such as major tech platforms and entertainment companies. It’s apparel brands, dating apps, and even B2B fintech companies. And they’re all vying to “pop up” in these cultural spaces authentically to seize the full-funnel opportunity before, during, and after the event itself.
“We definitely see that the halo effect is very real,” said Mikayla Hopkins, Head of Marketing at Tracksuit, a company that measures how brand sentiment shifts and benchmarks at the individual and category level. “Coachella, for example, is one moment in a series of events and conversations that actually shift how people think and talk about a brand. Those brands that show up authentically in culture move more than awareness; it’s moving consideration, it’s moving preference, and it’s actually building belonging.”Â
Designing for Impact: When Specificity Beats Scale
If this year’s Coachella could teach brands anything, it’s that “specificity beats scale every time,” Hopkins said. The brands that saw the greatest media halo effect around their Coachella activations were those with a very clear vision and goal.Â
Pinterest was arguably one of the grander examples of how this mission drives brand immersion. The social media platform recently launched a much larger “stop the scroll” campaign and used its Coachella presence to bring it to life by enforcing a strict no-phones policy for its space. Guests were asked to lock away their phones and enjoy several activations, including a custom charm bar, a Joy Guide personalization experience, a beauty bar developed with e.l.f. Cosmetics, and a photo booth.
Every element “was designed to feel hands-on, expressive, and worth remembering,” Sara Pollack, Pinterest’s Global Head of Consumer Marketing, told Future Commerce. “We wanted to build an experience that reflected what Pinterest does best, which is spark inspiration that people can bring into their real lives. The strategy was to create a space that invited people to meaningfully participate, rather than perform, and that meant going phone-free.”Â
While some marketers may fear that a no-phone policy would mean people wouldn’t share about their experience, Pinterest saw the opposite effect. Attendees engaged with the experience so deeply that they were more excited to talk about it, and the media saw the somewhat contradictory concept as the ultimate hook.Â
“That collab made unplugging a product, and that’s very smart,” Hopkins noted.Â
But as Hopkins explained, “it’s not just those who spend the biggest wins,” she explained. “And I think that’s exciting, as a marketer who has been on the brand side working both in beer and beauty. It’s around how you build a universe, not a booth. That makes it far more exciting and enticing for small- and medium-sized brands to actually win on stage at a place like Coachella. That is changing the landscape.”Â
One example of a smaller, new entrant is Seeking, a dating app targeting young, highly motivated professionals. Co-CEO Dana Rosewall saw REVOLVE Festival, the popular influencer-led event that runs adjacent to Coachella, as the perfect venue to engage with the app’s target audience.
“REVOLVE Fest is one of the few environments where the culture, aspiration, and identity all collide in real life,” Rosewall said. “To me, that's exactly where modern dating lives now. It's not just digital — it's actually lifestyle-driven. We wanted to shift how people feel about meeting someone on the platform and to drive brand awareness. The digital space is just so ridiculously crowded, so we were wondering how we can gain attention and really connect to people outside of the brand as human beings.”Â
With a branded space complete with a mechanical bull, Seeking promised concert-goers “the ride of a lifetime.” The result was a high-energy, shareable moment that directly complemented the high energy of the musical acts. But it is also connected to Seeking’s broader marketing position, which is to encourage its users to elevate their expectations and make bolder choices in their dating life.Â
The approach was a significant pivot from other REVOLVE and Coachella brands that focused on product testing, sampling, and conversion. “We’re a service-based company, so we knew we had to do something that made people feel something, not necessarily walk away with a tangible thing,” Rosewall said. “People had smiles, and they loved it, so it was a big success.”
For Seeking, the investment more than paid off thanks to the placement and the designed user journey. “We were right next to the stage, so the music was going and there was the whole atmosphere and flow of it,” Rosewall said. “We sat with our user journey team to map the entire moment. We asked about placement, where the brand ambassadors would be, and how we’d talk to them about the brand itself to integrate it seamlessly into the experience. We had to come at it from a holistic point of view.”
The bull-riding activation also got people interested and engaged with the brand in a fun way. They didn’t ask consumers to convert or over-commit on-site because, as Rosewall explained, “people were at a festival. They’re not going to want to sign up for a dating profile there. So, we extended the offer to after the weekend.”Â
She knew the app sign-ups would come later, with the post-engagement sharing, and that was more than okay. “The first question always for these types of things is, how can you make it shareable? Digital amplifies these experiences and takes them to the next level.
“Sometimes these in-real-life activations don't have a direct ROI,” she added. “It has a much more invisible layer of impact than brands sometimes perceive.”Â
Taking Category Risks: When B2B Meets B2CÂ
The brands that show up at REVOLVE Fest are aspirational by design. But sandwiched between the PatrĂłns, PopSockets, and Huda Beautys was Brex, a corporate card and spend management platform that typically targets CFOs, founders, and finance operators at high-growth companies.
It may seem like a complete mismatch, but it was a chess move that ultimately made Brex stand out. "REVOLVE Fest is not our traditional ICP nor buyers," said Nicole Thomas, Head of Partner Marketing at Brex. "The decision to show up here was a deliberate experiment."
Brex had been working with REVOLVE as a prospective customer, and through that process, Thomas got a firsthand look at how REVOLVE builds community around its brand. Its ecosystem of founders, DTC operators, and creators is the lifeblood of the brand community, and they all engage in the same cultural moments. The activation that followed, Brex Cafe, was a branded build-out on the REVOLVE Festival grounds, creating a complementary culinary experience that felt luxe yet carefree.
The hero menu item was a caviar-and-hot-dog pairing, which had an unexpected, high-low contrast that was shareable and still true to the brand. "You can close a Series B and still keep your company culture irreverent,” Thomas said. “That tension is what we wanted people to feel and post about."Â
Thomas had also been watching how major card networks approached brand building by making a card feel like access to a community rather than just a financial product. She wanted to test whether Brex could run a similar play in a space its customers already inhabited. "The window to be a first-mover in this space is closing fast," she said. "We were already in it before the conversation caught up."
Approximately 4,000 guests moved through Brex Cafe throughout the day. The company saved a small bundle of tickets to host a curated group of VIP brand operators and founders, which allowed the conversations to be tighter and more intentional. The experiences were crafted to serve two distinct purposes for two distinct audiences.Â
Brex didn’t broadcast its presence in advance. The awareness play was meant to happen in the moment and extend outward through two founder-influencers: Amy Joseph of MishMish Beauty and Jeannette Aranda of ElliotCole, whose content lived at the intersection of brand, business, and lifestyle. The organic user-generated content followed: Instagram content hit engagement rates of 7-9.5% against a 3.89% benchmark. A LinkedIn photo recap landed at 25.8% organic engagement, one of the strongest posts Brex launched all year. And then, unsolicited, the activation appeared in Vin Matano's B2B marketing highlights roundup, which covers B2B culture and creator strategy. This mention was external validation that Brex was on to something.Â
The primary takeaway for Thomas and her team was that the primary persona engaging with the experience skewed more toward brand and marketing than toward finance. This was an insight into the buyer’s journey, not a point of failure. "The sales motion for a brand founder who discovered Brex at a lifestyle event is not the same as someone who came to us through a fintech conference, and we need to build for that distinction."
Thomas walked out of REVOLVE Fest and Coachella weekend feeling “more conviction” about how the model could work for Brex in the future. “The two-layer model works. A broad brand activation drives awareness and cultural presence at scale, and a negotiated VIP component layered on top creates pipeline motion without those two things competing.”Â
In 2027, Brex aims to be more deliberate and content-forward. The team learned that an activation serves as a powerful content broadcast studio, so they need to design every element for social distribution first. “The in-person experience is the foundation rather than the end goal; that is the adjustment we will build into next year,” Thomas said. “We will probably refine the message to clarify Brex's core offering, making it obvious to influencers and viewers of our content and live activations. It is a constant process of walking the line between cultural relevance and adapting the brand to the environment, but also staying core to what our message is and who we are.”
The fact that this B2B fintech is already thinking about its second year at a music festival shows that the marketing experiment has graduated into a strategy.
Beyond ROI: When Culture Drives Connection
High-immersion cultural moments and activations create concentrated attention. They bring together like-minded individuals who are hyper-focused on the moment of connecting and enjoying together. The best brands are designing experiences that embed themselves in that moment and add distinct value that inspires people to share their experiences verbally and visually long after the event itself.Â
The real ROI of cultural experiences like Coachella lives across awareness, consideration, preference, and earned media spillover. And while Pinterest, Seeking, and Brex all have different goals, budgets, and priorities, they all intentionally designed experiences that captured the moment and activated a long-term media ripple effect. The weakest plays treat the moment as a photo op when it should really be a platform for community building.Â
The global Experience Economy is seeing a new wave of growth as consumers seek refuge from their digital screens. This sector, which focuses on premium live events, entertainment, and other immersive experiences, has surpassed $1 trillion in value and is seeing even greater demand in the live event and festival circuit.Â
Global tourism and travel play a central role in this movement, and are expected to outpace general economic growth this year, accounting for nearly 10% of global GDP. US travel growth alone is expected to reach $1.37 trillion this year. Despite international travel to the US flailing, domestic travel is thriving: it now accounts for 87% of total revenue and has officially returned to 2019 inflation-adjusted levels.Â
Several emotional, psychological, and cultural factors play into this new economy:Â
- Escape from digital immersion: Mastercard found that European consumers are suffering from digital deluge. They’re breaking free from algorithmic entrancement and, in turn, 60% are prioritizing their spending on offline experiences.
- FOMO: Ironically, in-person cultural events are breeding grounds for social media content creation. This creates a powerful digital ripple effect that creates a mass-scale “fear of missing out.” More than half of Americans say they are more likely to spend on dining, travel, and in-person entertainment because of this FOMO. The demographic most likely to do this is Gen Z: 86% admit that they overspend on live events because they don’t want to miss out.
- Community belonging: Although most consumers, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, are exploring and building their interests online, 95% are looking to extend them to in-real-life moments. Eventbrite calls these environments “Fourth Spaces,” and they can be massive in scale, like a Coachella, or more intimate, niche events. The connecting point is that consumers are using these spaces to foster community and feel a more authentic sense of belonging.Â
The research points to a major opportunity for brands. When consumers feel immersed in a moment and truly connected to the people and environment, they are more likely to engage with all aspects of a space. Brand activations at events can drive 4x higher recall than digital ads, and some consumers (again, Gen Z) are more likely to overspend at these events because it’s simply “part of the experience.”Â
Music festivals like Coachella are uniquely effective because attendees are present, engaged, and receptive. They’re likely attending the festival because they’re a fan of one or several acts, which makes their adrenaline and dopamine escalate. There’s an innate passion and excitement tethered to the experience, and when these feelings brew, the YOLO mentality emerges. Post-event, that feeling continues, with earned media generating a powerful ripple effect. Analysts tracking Coachella 2026 noted that brand activations during Weekend One alone generated an estimated $870 million in Media Impact Value, making it one of the highest-concentration brand marketing environments in the world.
That is why, despite the cost of participation increasing year over year, Coachella remains the ultimate blueprint for experiences across live music, sporting events, and even tech conferences.
But brands are no longer simply buying event sponsorships and logo placements; they’re buying access to experiences that have captive audiences and cultural legitimacy. Dollars are flowing into festivals because they offer the visibility, the real estate, and the open creative palate for brands to create engaging, even unexpected spaces that consumers will love. And it’s not just the obvious cast of characters, such as major tech platforms and entertainment companies. It’s apparel brands, dating apps, and even B2B fintech companies. And they’re all vying to “pop up” in these cultural spaces authentically to seize the full-funnel opportunity before, during, and after the event itself.
“We definitely see that the halo effect is very real,” said Mikayla Hopkins, Head of Marketing at Tracksuit, a company that measures how brand sentiment shifts and benchmarks at the individual and category level. “Coachella, for example, is one moment in a series of events and conversations that actually shift how people think and talk about a brand. Those brands that show up authentically in culture move more than awareness; it’s moving consideration, it’s moving preference, and it’s actually building belonging.”Â
Designing for Impact: When Specificity Beats Scale
If this year’s Coachella could teach brands anything, it’s that “specificity beats scale every time,” Hopkins said. The brands that saw the greatest media halo effect around their Coachella activations were those with a very clear vision and goal.Â
Pinterest was arguably one of the grander examples of how this mission drives brand immersion. The social media platform recently launched a much larger “stop the scroll” campaign and used its Coachella presence to bring it to life by enforcing a strict no-phones policy for its space. Guests were asked to lock away their phones and enjoy several activations, including a custom charm bar, a Joy Guide personalization experience, a beauty bar developed with e.l.f. Cosmetics, and a photo booth.
Every element “was designed to feel hands-on, expressive, and worth remembering,” Sara Pollack, Pinterest’s Global Head of Consumer Marketing, told Future Commerce. “We wanted to build an experience that reflected what Pinterest does best, which is spark inspiration that people can bring into their real lives. The strategy was to create a space that invited people to meaningfully participate, rather than perform, and that meant going phone-free.”Â
While some marketers may fear that a no-phone policy would mean people wouldn’t share about their experience, Pinterest saw the opposite effect. Attendees engaged with the experience so deeply that they were more excited to talk about it, and the media saw the somewhat contradictory concept as the ultimate hook.Â
“That collab made unplugging a product, and that’s very smart,” Hopkins noted.Â
But as Hopkins explained, “it’s not just those who spend the biggest wins,” she explained. “And I think that’s exciting, as a marketer who has been on the brand side working both in beer and beauty. It’s around how you build a universe, not a booth. That makes it far more exciting and enticing for small- and medium-sized brands to actually win on stage at a place like Coachella. That is changing the landscape.”Â
One example of a smaller, new entrant is Seeking, a dating app targeting young, highly motivated professionals. Co-CEO Dana Rosewall saw REVOLVE Festival, the popular influencer-led event that runs adjacent to Coachella, as the perfect venue to engage with the app’s target audience.
“REVOLVE Fest is one of the few environments where the culture, aspiration, and identity all collide in real life,” Rosewall said. “To me, that's exactly where modern dating lives now. It's not just digital — it's actually lifestyle-driven. We wanted to shift how people feel about meeting someone on the platform and to drive brand awareness. The digital space is just so ridiculously crowded, so we were wondering how we can gain attention and really connect to people outside of the brand as human beings.”Â
With a branded space complete with a mechanical bull, Seeking promised concert-goers “the ride of a lifetime.” The result was a high-energy, shareable moment that directly complemented the high energy of the musical acts. But it is also connected to Seeking’s broader marketing position, which is to encourage its users to elevate their expectations and make bolder choices in their dating life.Â
The approach was a significant pivot from other REVOLVE and Coachella brands that focused on product testing, sampling, and conversion. “We’re a service-based company, so we knew we had to do something that made people feel something, not necessarily walk away with a tangible thing,” Rosewall said. “People had smiles, and they loved it, so it was a big success.”
For Seeking, the investment more than paid off thanks to the placement and the designed user journey. “We were right next to the stage, so the music was going and there was the whole atmosphere and flow of it,” Rosewall said. “We sat with our user journey team to map the entire moment. We asked about placement, where the brand ambassadors would be, and how we’d talk to them about the brand itself to integrate it seamlessly into the experience. We had to come at it from a holistic point of view.”
The bull-riding activation also got people interested and engaged with the brand in a fun way. They didn’t ask consumers to convert or over-commit on-site because, as Rosewall explained, “people were at a festival. They’re not going to want to sign up for a dating profile there. So, we extended the offer to after the weekend.”Â
She knew the app sign-ups would come later, with the post-engagement sharing, and that was more than okay. “The first question always for these types of things is, how can you make it shareable? Digital amplifies these experiences and takes them to the next level.
“Sometimes these in-real-life activations don't have a direct ROI,” she added. “It has a much more invisible layer of impact than brands sometimes perceive.”Â
Taking Category Risks: When B2B Meets B2CÂ
The brands that show up at REVOLVE Fest are aspirational by design. But sandwiched between the PatrĂłns, PopSockets, and Huda Beautys was Brex, a corporate card and spend management platform that typically targets CFOs, founders, and finance operators at high-growth companies.
It may seem like a complete mismatch, but it was a chess move that ultimately made Brex stand out. "REVOLVE Fest is not our traditional ICP nor buyers," said Nicole Thomas, Head of Partner Marketing at Brex. "The decision to show up here was a deliberate experiment."
Brex had been working with REVOLVE as a prospective customer, and through that process, Thomas got a firsthand look at how REVOLVE builds community around its brand. Its ecosystem of founders, DTC operators, and creators is the lifeblood of the brand community, and they all engage in the same cultural moments. The activation that followed, Brex Cafe, was a branded build-out on the REVOLVE Festival grounds, creating a complementary culinary experience that felt luxe yet carefree.
The hero menu item was a caviar-and-hot-dog pairing, which had an unexpected, high-low contrast that was shareable and still true to the brand. "You can close a Series B and still keep your company culture irreverent,” Thomas said. “That tension is what we wanted people to feel and post about."Â
Thomas had also been watching how major card networks approached brand building by making a card feel like access to a community rather than just a financial product. She wanted to test whether Brex could run a similar play in a space its customers already inhabited. "The window to be a first-mover in this space is closing fast," she said. "We were already in it before the conversation caught up."
Approximately 4,000 guests moved through Brex Cafe throughout the day. The company saved a small bundle of tickets to host a curated group of VIP brand operators and founders, which allowed the conversations to be tighter and more intentional. The experiences were crafted to serve two distinct purposes for two distinct audiences.Â
Brex didn’t broadcast its presence in advance. The awareness play was meant to happen in the moment and extend outward through two founder-influencers: Amy Joseph of MishMish Beauty and Jeannette Aranda of ElliotCole, whose content lived at the intersection of brand, business, and lifestyle. The organic user-generated content followed: Instagram content hit engagement rates of 7-9.5% against a 3.89% benchmark. A LinkedIn photo recap landed at 25.8% organic engagement, one of the strongest posts Brex launched all year. And then, unsolicited, the activation appeared in Vin Matano's B2B marketing highlights roundup, which covers B2B culture and creator strategy. This mention was external validation that Brex was on to something.Â
The primary takeaway for Thomas and her team was that the primary persona engaging with the experience skewed more toward brand and marketing than toward finance. This was an insight into the buyer’s journey, not a point of failure. "The sales motion for a brand founder who discovered Brex at a lifestyle event is not the same as someone who came to us through a fintech conference, and we need to build for that distinction."
Thomas walked out of REVOLVE Fest and Coachella weekend feeling “more conviction” about how the model could work for Brex in the future. “The two-layer model works. A broad brand activation drives awareness and cultural presence at scale, and a negotiated VIP component layered on top creates pipeline motion without those two things competing.”Â
In 2027, Brex aims to be more deliberate and content-forward. The team learned that an activation serves as a powerful content broadcast studio, so they need to design every element for social distribution first. “The in-person experience is the foundation rather than the end goal; that is the adjustment we will build into next year,” Thomas said. “We will probably refine the message to clarify Brex's core offering, making it obvious to influencers and viewers of our content and live activations. It is a constant process of walking the line between cultural relevance and adapting the brand to the environment, but also staying core to what our message is and who we are.”
The fact that this B2B fintech is already thinking about its second year at a music festival shows that the marketing experiment has graduated into a strategy.
Beyond ROI: When Culture Drives Connection
High-immersion cultural moments and activations create concentrated attention. They bring together like-minded individuals who are hyper-focused on the moment of connecting and enjoying together. The best brands are designing experiences that embed themselves in that moment and add distinct value that inspires people to share their experiences verbally and visually long after the event itself.Â
The real ROI of cultural experiences like Coachella lives across awareness, consideration, preference, and earned media spillover. And while Pinterest, Seeking, and Brex all have different goals, budgets, and priorities, they all intentionally designed experiences that captured the moment and activated a long-term media ripple effect. The weakest plays treat the moment as a photo op when it should really be a platform for community building.Â
The global Experience Economy is seeing a new wave of growth as consumers seek refuge from their digital screens. This sector, which focuses on premium live events, entertainment, and other immersive experiences, has surpassed $1 trillion in value and is seeing even greater demand in the live event and festival circuit.Â
Global tourism and travel play a central role in this movement, and are expected to outpace general economic growth this year, accounting for nearly 10% of global GDP. US travel growth alone is expected to reach $1.37 trillion this year. Despite international travel to the US flailing, domestic travel is thriving: it now accounts for 87% of total revenue and has officially returned to 2019 inflation-adjusted levels.Â
Several emotional, psychological, and cultural factors play into this new economy:Â
- Escape from digital immersion: Mastercard found that European consumers are suffering from digital deluge. They’re breaking free from algorithmic entrancement and, in turn, 60% are prioritizing their spending on offline experiences.
- FOMO: Ironically, in-person cultural events are breeding grounds for social media content creation. This creates a powerful digital ripple effect that creates a mass-scale “fear of missing out.” More than half of Americans say they are more likely to spend on dining, travel, and in-person entertainment because of this FOMO. The demographic most likely to do this is Gen Z: 86% admit that they overspend on live events because they don’t want to miss out.
- Community belonging: Although most consumers, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, are exploring and building their interests online, 95% are looking to extend them to in-real-life moments. Eventbrite calls these environments “Fourth Spaces,” and they can be massive in scale, like a Coachella, or more intimate, niche events. The connecting point is that consumers are using these spaces to foster community and feel a more authentic sense of belonging.Â
The research points to a major opportunity for brands. When consumers feel immersed in a moment and truly connected to the people and environment, they are more likely to engage with all aspects of a space. Brand activations at events can drive 4x higher recall than digital ads, and some consumers (again, Gen Z) are more likely to overspend at these events because it’s simply “part of the experience.”Â
Music festivals like Coachella are uniquely effective because attendees are present, engaged, and receptive. They’re likely attending the festival because they’re a fan of one or several acts, which makes their adrenaline and dopamine escalate. There’s an innate passion and excitement tethered to the experience, and when these feelings brew, the YOLO mentality emerges. Post-event, that feeling continues, with earned media generating a powerful ripple effect. Analysts tracking Coachella 2026 noted that brand activations during Weekend One alone generated an estimated $870 million in Media Impact Value, making it one of the highest-concentration brand marketing environments in the world.
That is why, despite the cost of participation increasing year over year, Coachella remains the ultimate blueprint for experiences across live music, sporting events, and even tech conferences.
But brands are no longer simply buying event sponsorships and logo placements; they’re buying access to experiences that have captive audiences and cultural legitimacy. Dollars are flowing into festivals because they offer the visibility, the real estate, and the open creative palate for brands to create engaging, even unexpected spaces that consumers will love. And it’s not just the obvious cast of characters, such as major tech platforms and entertainment companies. It’s apparel brands, dating apps, and even B2B fintech companies. And they’re all vying to “pop up” in these cultural spaces authentically to seize the full-funnel opportunity before, during, and after the event itself.
“We definitely see that the halo effect is very real,” said Mikayla Hopkins, Head of Marketing at Tracksuit, a company that measures how brand sentiment shifts and benchmarks at the individual and category level. “Coachella, for example, is one moment in a series of events and conversations that actually shift how people think and talk about a brand. Those brands that show up authentically in culture move more than awareness; it’s moving consideration, it’s moving preference, and it’s actually building belonging.”Â
Designing for Impact: When Specificity Beats Scale
If this year’s Coachella could teach brands anything, it’s that “specificity beats scale every time,” Hopkins said. The brands that saw the greatest media halo effect around their Coachella activations were those with a very clear vision and goal.Â
Pinterest was arguably one of the grander examples of how this mission drives brand immersion. The social media platform recently launched a much larger “stop the scroll” campaign and used its Coachella presence to bring it to life by enforcing a strict no-phones policy for its space. Guests were asked to lock away their phones and enjoy several activations, including a custom charm bar, a Joy Guide personalization experience, a beauty bar developed with e.l.f. Cosmetics, and a photo booth.
Every element “was designed to feel hands-on, expressive, and worth remembering,” Sara Pollack, Pinterest’s Global Head of Consumer Marketing, told Future Commerce. “We wanted to build an experience that reflected what Pinterest does best, which is spark inspiration that people can bring into their real lives. The strategy was to create a space that invited people to meaningfully participate, rather than perform, and that meant going phone-free.”Â
While some marketers may fear that a no-phone policy would mean people wouldn’t share about their experience, Pinterest saw the opposite effect. Attendees engaged with the experience so deeply that they were more excited to talk about it, and the media saw the somewhat contradictory concept as the ultimate hook.Â
“That collab made unplugging a product, and that’s very smart,” Hopkins noted.Â
But as Hopkins explained, “it’s not just those who spend the biggest wins,” she explained. “And I think that’s exciting, as a marketer who has been on the brand side working both in beer and beauty. It’s around how you build a universe, not a booth. That makes it far more exciting and enticing for small- and medium-sized brands to actually win on stage at a place like Coachella. That is changing the landscape.”Â
One example of a smaller, new entrant is Seeking, a dating app targeting young, highly motivated professionals. Co-CEO Dana Rosewall saw REVOLVE Festival, the popular influencer-led event that runs adjacent to Coachella, as the perfect venue to engage with the app’s target audience.
“REVOLVE Fest is one of the few environments where the culture, aspiration, and identity all collide in real life,” Rosewall said. “To me, that's exactly where modern dating lives now. It's not just digital — it's actually lifestyle-driven. We wanted to shift how people feel about meeting someone on the platform and to drive brand awareness. The digital space is just so ridiculously crowded, so we were wondering how we can gain attention and really connect to people outside of the brand as human beings.”Â
With a branded space complete with a mechanical bull, Seeking promised concert-goers “the ride of a lifetime.” The result was a high-energy, shareable moment that directly complemented the high energy of the musical acts. But it is also connected to Seeking’s broader marketing position, which is to encourage its users to elevate their expectations and make bolder choices in their dating life.Â
The approach was a significant pivot from other REVOLVE and Coachella brands that focused on product testing, sampling, and conversion. “We’re a service-based company, so we knew we had to do something that made people feel something, not necessarily walk away with a tangible thing,” Rosewall said. “People had smiles, and they loved it, so it was a big success.”
For Seeking, the investment more than paid off thanks to the placement and the designed user journey. “We were right next to the stage, so the music was going and there was the whole atmosphere and flow of it,” Rosewall said. “We sat with our user journey team to map the entire moment. We asked about placement, where the brand ambassadors would be, and how we’d talk to them about the brand itself to integrate it seamlessly into the experience. We had to come at it from a holistic point of view.”
The bull-riding activation also got people interested and engaged with the brand in a fun way. They didn’t ask consumers to convert or over-commit on-site because, as Rosewall explained, “people were at a festival. They’re not going to want to sign up for a dating profile there. So, we extended the offer to after the weekend.”Â
She knew the app sign-ups would come later, with the post-engagement sharing, and that was more than okay. “The first question always for these types of things is, how can you make it shareable? Digital amplifies these experiences and takes them to the next level.
“Sometimes these in-real-life activations don't have a direct ROI,” she added. “It has a much more invisible layer of impact than brands sometimes perceive.”Â
Taking Category Risks: When B2B Meets B2CÂ
The brands that show up at REVOLVE Fest are aspirational by design. But sandwiched between the PatrĂłns, PopSockets, and Huda Beautys was Brex, a corporate card and spend management platform that typically targets CFOs, founders, and finance operators at high-growth companies.
It may seem like a complete mismatch, but it was a chess move that ultimately made Brex stand out. "REVOLVE Fest is not our traditional ICP nor buyers," said Nicole Thomas, Head of Partner Marketing at Brex. "The decision to show up here was a deliberate experiment."
Brex had been working with REVOLVE as a prospective customer, and through that process, Thomas got a firsthand look at how REVOLVE builds community around its brand. Its ecosystem of founders, DTC operators, and creators is the lifeblood of the brand community, and they all engage in the same cultural moments. The activation that followed, Brex Cafe, was a branded build-out on the REVOLVE Festival grounds, creating a complementary culinary experience that felt luxe yet carefree.
The hero menu item was a caviar-and-hot-dog pairing, which had an unexpected, high-low contrast that was shareable and still true to the brand. "You can close a Series B and still keep your company culture irreverent,” Thomas said. “That tension is what we wanted people to feel and post about."Â
Thomas had also been watching how major card networks approached brand building by making a card feel like access to a community rather than just a financial product. She wanted to test whether Brex could run a similar play in a space its customers already inhabited. "The window to be a first-mover in this space is closing fast," she said. "We were already in it before the conversation caught up."
Approximately 4,000 guests moved through Brex Cafe throughout the day. The company saved a small bundle of tickets to host a curated group of VIP brand operators and founders, which allowed the conversations to be tighter and more intentional. The experiences were crafted to serve two distinct purposes for two distinct audiences.Â
Brex didn’t broadcast its presence in advance. The awareness play was meant to happen in the moment and extend outward through two founder-influencers: Amy Joseph of MishMish Beauty and Jeannette Aranda of ElliotCole, whose content lived at the intersection of brand, business, and lifestyle. The organic user-generated content followed: Instagram content hit engagement rates of 7-9.5% against a 3.89% benchmark. A LinkedIn photo recap landed at 25.8% organic engagement, one of the strongest posts Brex launched all year. And then, unsolicited, the activation appeared in Vin Matano's B2B marketing highlights roundup, which covers B2B culture and creator strategy. This mention was external validation that Brex was on to something.Â
The primary takeaway for Thomas and her team was that the primary persona engaging with the experience skewed more toward brand and marketing than toward finance. This was an insight into the buyer’s journey, not a point of failure. "The sales motion for a brand founder who discovered Brex at a lifestyle event is not the same as someone who came to us through a fintech conference, and we need to build for that distinction."
Thomas walked out of REVOLVE Fest and Coachella weekend feeling “more conviction” about how the model could work for Brex in the future. “The two-layer model works. A broad brand activation drives awareness and cultural presence at scale, and a negotiated VIP component layered on top creates pipeline motion without those two things competing.”Â
In 2027, Brex aims to be more deliberate and content-forward. The team learned that an activation serves as a powerful content broadcast studio, so they need to design every element for social distribution first. “The in-person experience is the foundation rather than the end goal; that is the adjustment we will build into next year,” Thomas said. “We will probably refine the message to clarify Brex's core offering, making it obvious to influencers and viewers of our content and live activations. It is a constant process of walking the line between cultural relevance and adapting the brand to the environment, but also staying core to what our message is and who we are.”
The fact that this B2B fintech is already thinking about its second year at a music festival shows that the marketing experiment has graduated into a strategy.
Beyond ROI: When Culture Drives Connection
High-immersion cultural moments and activations create concentrated attention. They bring together like-minded individuals who are hyper-focused on the moment of connecting and enjoying together. The best brands are designing experiences that embed themselves in that moment and add distinct value that inspires people to share their experiences verbally and visually long after the event itself.Â
The real ROI of cultural experiences like Coachella lives across awareness, consideration, preference, and earned media spillover. And while Pinterest, Seeking, and Brex all have different goals, budgets, and priorities, they all intentionally designed experiences that captured the moment and activated a long-term media ripple effect. The weakest plays treat the moment as a photo op when it should really be a platform for community building.Â
The global Experience Economy is seeing a new wave of growth as consumers seek refuge from their digital screens. This sector, which focuses on premium live events, entertainment, and other immersive experiences, has surpassed $1 trillion in value and is seeing even greater demand in the live event and festival circuit.Â
Global tourism and travel play a central role in this movement, and are expected to outpace general economic growth this year, accounting for nearly 10% of global GDP. US travel growth alone is expected to reach $1.37 trillion this year. Despite international travel to the US flailing, domestic travel is thriving: it now accounts for 87% of total revenue and has officially returned to 2019 inflation-adjusted levels.Â
Several emotional, psychological, and cultural factors play into this new economy:Â
- Escape from digital immersion: Mastercard found that European consumers are suffering from digital deluge. They’re breaking free from algorithmic entrancement and, in turn, 60% are prioritizing their spending on offline experiences.
- FOMO: Ironically, in-person cultural events are breeding grounds for social media content creation. This creates a powerful digital ripple effect that creates a mass-scale “fear of missing out.” More than half of Americans say they are more likely to spend on dining, travel, and in-person entertainment because of this FOMO. The demographic most likely to do this is Gen Z: 86% admit that they overspend on live events because they don’t want to miss out.
- Community belonging: Although most consumers, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, are exploring and building their interests online, 95% are looking to extend them to in-real-life moments. Eventbrite calls these environments “Fourth Spaces,” and they can be massive in scale, like a Coachella, or more intimate, niche events. The connecting point is that consumers are using these spaces to foster community and feel a more authentic sense of belonging.Â
The research points to a major opportunity for brands. When consumers feel immersed in a moment and truly connected to the people and environment, they are more likely to engage with all aspects of a space. Brand activations at events can drive 4x higher recall than digital ads, and some consumers (again, Gen Z) are more likely to overspend at these events because it’s simply “part of the experience.”Â
Music festivals like Coachella are uniquely effective because attendees are present, engaged, and receptive. They’re likely attending the festival because they’re a fan of one or several acts, which makes their adrenaline and dopamine escalate. There’s an innate passion and excitement tethered to the experience, and when these feelings brew, the YOLO mentality emerges. Post-event, that feeling continues, with earned media generating a powerful ripple effect. Analysts tracking Coachella 2026 noted that brand activations during Weekend One alone generated an estimated $870 million in Media Impact Value, making it one of the highest-concentration brand marketing environments in the world.
That is why, despite the cost of participation increasing year over year, Coachella remains the ultimate blueprint for experiences across live music, sporting events, and even tech conferences.
But brands are no longer simply buying event sponsorships and logo placements; they’re buying access to experiences that have captive audiences and cultural legitimacy. Dollars are flowing into festivals because they offer the visibility, the real estate, and the open creative palate for brands to create engaging, even unexpected spaces that consumers will love. And it’s not just the obvious cast of characters, such as major tech platforms and entertainment companies. It’s apparel brands, dating apps, and even B2B fintech companies. And they’re all vying to “pop up” in these cultural spaces authentically to seize the full-funnel opportunity before, during, and after the event itself.
“We definitely see that the halo effect is very real,” said Mikayla Hopkins, Head of Marketing at Tracksuit, a company that measures how brand sentiment shifts and benchmarks at the individual and category level. “Coachella, for example, is one moment in a series of events and conversations that actually shift how people think and talk about a brand. Those brands that show up authentically in culture move more than awareness; it’s moving consideration, it’s moving preference, and it’s actually building belonging.”Â
Designing for Impact: When Specificity Beats Scale
If this year’s Coachella could teach brands anything, it’s that “specificity beats scale every time,” Hopkins said. The brands that saw the greatest media halo effect around their Coachella activations were those with a very clear vision and goal.Â
Pinterest was arguably one of the grander examples of how this mission drives brand immersion. The social media platform recently launched a much larger “stop the scroll” campaign and used its Coachella presence to bring it to life by enforcing a strict no-phones policy for its space. Guests were asked to lock away their phones and enjoy several activations, including a custom charm bar, a Joy Guide personalization experience, a beauty bar developed with e.l.f. Cosmetics, and a photo booth.
Every element “was designed to feel hands-on, expressive, and worth remembering,” Sara Pollack, Pinterest’s Global Head of Consumer Marketing, told Future Commerce. “We wanted to build an experience that reflected what Pinterest does best, which is spark inspiration that people can bring into their real lives. The strategy was to create a space that invited people to meaningfully participate, rather than perform, and that meant going phone-free.”Â
While some marketers may fear that a no-phone policy would mean people wouldn’t share about their experience, Pinterest saw the opposite effect. Attendees engaged with the experience so deeply that they were more excited to talk about it, and the media saw the somewhat contradictory concept as the ultimate hook.Â
“That collab made unplugging a product, and that’s very smart,” Hopkins noted.Â
But as Hopkins explained, “it’s not just those who spend the biggest wins,” she explained. “And I think that’s exciting, as a marketer who has been on the brand side working both in beer and beauty. It’s around how you build a universe, not a booth. That makes it far more exciting and enticing for small- and medium-sized brands to actually win on stage at a place like Coachella. That is changing the landscape.”Â
One example of a smaller, new entrant is Seeking, a dating app targeting young, highly motivated professionals. Co-CEO Dana Rosewall saw REVOLVE Festival, the popular influencer-led event that runs adjacent to Coachella, as the perfect venue to engage with the app’s target audience.
“REVOLVE Fest is one of the few environments where the culture, aspiration, and identity all collide in real life,” Rosewall said. “To me, that's exactly where modern dating lives now. It's not just digital — it's actually lifestyle-driven. We wanted to shift how people feel about meeting someone on the platform and to drive brand awareness. The digital space is just so ridiculously crowded, so we were wondering how we can gain attention and really connect to people outside of the brand as human beings.”Â
With a branded space complete with a mechanical bull, Seeking promised concert-goers “the ride of a lifetime.” The result was a high-energy, shareable moment that directly complemented the high energy of the musical acts. But it is also connected to Seeking’s broader marketing position, which is to encourage its users to elevate their expectations and make bolder choices in their dating life.Â
The approach was a significant pivot from other REVOLVE and Coachella brands that focused on product testing, sampling, and conversion. “We’re a service-based company, so we knew we had to do something that made people feel something, not necessarily walk away with a tangible thing,” Rosewall said. “People had smiles, and they loved it, so it was a big success.”
For Seeking, the investment more than paid off thanks to the placement and the designed user journey. “We were right next to the stage, so the music was going and there was the whole atmosphere and flow of it,” Rosewall said. “We sat with our user journey team to map the entire moment. We asked about placement, where the brand ambassadors would be, and how we’d talk to them about the brand itself to integrate it seamlessly into the experience. We had to come at it from a holistic point of view.”
The bull-riding activation also got people interested and engaged with the brand in a fun way. They didn’t ask consumers to convert or over-commit on-site because, as Rosewall explained, “people were at a festival. They’re not going to want to sign up for a dating profile there. So, we extended the offer to after the weekend.”Â
She knew the app sign-ups would come later, with the post-engagement sharing, and that was more than okay. “The first question always for these types of things is, how can you make it shareable? Digital amplifies these experiences and takes them to the next level.
“Sometimes these in-real-life activations don't have a direct ROI,” she added. “It has a much more invisible layer of impact than brands sometimes perceive.”Â
Taking Category Risks: When B2B Meets B2CÂ
The brands that show up at REVOLVE Fest are aspirational by design. But sandwiched between the PatrĂłns, PopSockets, and Huda Beautys was Brex, a corporate card and spend management platform that typically targets CFOs, founders, and finance operators at high-growth companies.
It may seem like a complete mismatch, but it was a chess move that ultimately made Brex stand out. "REVOLVE Fest is not our traditional ICP nor buyers," said Nicole Thomas, Head of Partner Marketing at Brex. "The decision to show up here was a deliberate experiment."
Brex had been working with REVOLVE as a prospective customer, and through that process, Thomas got a firsthand look at how REVOLVE builds community around its brand. Its ecosystem of founders, DTC operators, and creators is the lifeblood of the brand community, and they all engage in the same cultural moments. The activation that followed, Brex Cafe, was a branded build-out on the REVOLVE Festival grounds, creating a complementary culinary experience that felt luxe yet carefree.
The hero menu item was a caviar-and-hot-dog pairing, which had an unexpected, high-low contrast that was shareable and still true to the brand. "You can close a Series B and still keep your company culture irreverent,” Thomas said. “That tension is what we wanted people to feel and post about."Â
Thomas had also been watching how major card networks approached brand building by making a card feel like access to a community rather than just a financial product. She wanted to test whether Brex could run a similar play in a space its customers already inhabited. "The window to be a first-mover in this space is closing fast," she said. "We were already in it before the conversation caught up."
Approximately 4,000 guests moved through Brex Cafe throughout the day. The company saved a small bundle of tickets to host a curated group of VIP brand operators and founders, which allowed the conversations to be tighter and more intentional. The experiences were crafted to serve two distinct purposes for two distinct audiences.Â
Brex didn’t broadcast its presence in advance. The awareness play was meant to happen in the moment and extend outward through two founder-influencers: Amy Joseph of MishMish Beauty and Jeannette Aranda of ElliotCole, whose content lived at the intersection of brand, business, and lifestyle. The organic user-generated content followed: Instagram content hit engagement rates of 7-9.5% against a 3.89% benchmark. A LinkedIn photo recap landed at 25.8% organic engagement, one of the strongest posts Brex launched all year. And then, unsolicited, the activation appeared in Vin Matano's B2B marketing highlights roundup, which covers B2B culture and creator strategy. This mention was external validation that Brex was on to something.Â
The primary takeaway for Thomas and her team was that the primary persona engaging with the experience skewed more toward brand and marketing than toward finance. This was an insight into the buyer’s journey, not a point of failure. "The sales motion for a brand founder who discovered Brex at a lifestyle event is not the same as someone who came to us through a fintech conference, and we need to build for that distinction."
Thomas walked out of REVOLVE Fest and Coachella weekend feeling “more conviction” about how the model could work for Brex in the future. “The two-layer model works. A broad brand activation drives awareness and cultural presence at scale, and a negotiated VIP component layered on top creates pipeline motion without those two things competing.”Â
In 2027, Brex aims to be more deliberate and content-forward. The team learned that an activation serves as a powerful content broadcast studio, so they need to design every element for social distribution first. “The in-person experience is the foundation rather than the end goal; that is the adjustment we will build into next year,” Thomas said. “We will probably refine the message to clarify Brex's core offering, making it obvious to influencers and viewers of our content and live activations. It is a constant process of walking the line between cultural relevance and adapting the brand to the environment, but also staying core to what our message is and who we are.”
The fact that this B2B fintech is already thinking about its second year at a music festival shows that the marketing experiment has graduated into a strategy.
Beyond ROI: When Culture Drives Connection
High-immersion cultural moments and activations create concentrated attention. They bring together like-minded individuals who are hyper-focused on the moment of connecting and enjoying together. The best brands are designing experiences that embed themselves in that moment and add distinct value that inspires people to share their experiences verbally and visually long after the event itself.Â
The real ROI of cultural experiences like Coachella lives across awareness, consideration, preference, and earned media spillover. And while Pinterest, Seeking, and Brex all have different goals, budgets, and priorities, they all intentionally designed experiences that captured the moment and activated a long-term media ripple effect. The weakest plays treat the moment as a photo op when it should really be a platform for community building.Â
The global Experience Economy is seeing a new wave of growth as consumers seek refuge from their digital screens. This sector, which focuses on premium live events, entertainment, and other immersive experiences, has surpassed $1 trillion in value and is seeing even greater demand in the live event and festival circuit.Â
Global tourism and travel play a central role in this movement, and are expected to outpace general economic growth this year, accounting for nearly 10% of global GDP. US travel growth alone is expected to reach $1.37 trillion this year. Despite international travel to the US flailing, domestic travel is thriving: it now accounts for 87% of total revenue and has officially returned to 2019 inflation-adjusted levels.Â
Several emotional, psychological, and cultural factors play into this new economy:Â
- Escape from digital immersion: Mastercard found that European consumers are suffering from digital deluge. They’re breaking free from algorithmic entrancement and, in turn, 60% are prioritizing their spending on offline experiences.
- FOMO: Ironically, in-person cultural events are breeding grounds for social media content creation. This creates a powerful digital ripple effect that creates a mass-scale “fear of missing out.” More than half of Americans say they are more likely to spend on dining, travel, and in-person entertainment because of this FOMO. The demographic most likely to do this is Gen Z: 86% admit that they overspend on live events because they don’t want to miss out.
- Community belonging: Although most consumers, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, are exploring and building their interests online, 95% are looking to extend them to in-real-life moments. Eventbrite calls these environments “Fourth Spaces,” and they can be massive in scale, like a Coachella, or more intimate, niche events. The connecting point is that consumers are using these spaces to foster community and feel a more authentic sense of belonging.Â
The research points to a major opportunity for brands. When consumers feel immersed in a moment and truly connected to the people and environment, they are more likely to engage with all aspects of a space. Brand activations at events can drive 4x higher recall than digital ads, and some consumers (again, Gen Z) are more likely to overspend at these events because it’s simply “part of the experience.”Â
Music festivals like Coachella are uniquely effective because attendees are present, engaged, and receptive. They’re likely attending the festival because they’re a fan of one or several acts, which makes their adrenaline and dopamine escalate. There’s an innate passion and excitement tethered to the experience, and when these feelings brew, the YOLO mentality emerges. Post-event, that feeling continues, with earned media generating a powerful ripple effect. Analysts tracking Coachella 2026 noted that brand activations during Weekend One alone generated an estimated $870 million in Media Impact Value, making it one of the highest-concentration brand marketing environments in the world.
That is why, despite the cost of participation increasing year over year, Coachella remains the ultimate blueprint for experiences across live music, sporting events, and even tech conferences.
But brands are no longer simply buying event sponsorships and logo placements; they’re buying access to experiences that have captive audiences and cultural legitimacy. Dollars are flowing into festivals because they offer the visibility, the real estate, and the open creative palate for brands to create engaging, even unexpected spaces that consumers will love. And it’s not just the obvious cast of characters, such as major tech platforms and entertainment companies. It’s apparel brands, dating apps, and even B2B fintech companies. And they’re all vying to “pop up” in these cultural spaces authentically to seize the full-funnel opportunity before, during, and after the event itself.
“We definitely see that the halo effect is very real,” said Mikayla Hopkins, Head of Marketing at Tracksuit, a company that measures how brand sentiment shifts and benchmarks at the individual and category level. “Coachella, for example, is one moment in a series of events and conversations that actually shift how people think and talk about a brand. Those brands that show up authentically in culture move more than awareness; it’s moving consideration, it’s moving preference, and it’s actually building belonging.”Â
Designing for Impact: When Specificity Beats Scale
If this year’s Coachella could teach brands anything, it’s that “specificity beats scale every time,” Hopkins said. The brands that saw the greatest media halo effect around their Coachella activations were those with a very clear vision and goal.Â
Pinterest was arguably one of the grander examples of how this mission drives brand immersion. The social media platform recently launched a much larger “stop the scroll” campaign and used its Coachella presence to bring it to life by enforcing a strict no-phones policy for its space. Guests were asked to lock away their phones and enjoy several activations, including a custom charm bar, a Joy Guide personalization experience, a beauty bar developed with e.l.f. Cosmetics, and a photo booth.
Every element “was designed to feel hands-on, expressive, and worth remembering,” Sara Pollack, Pinterest’s Global Head of Consumer Marketing, told Future Commerce. “We wanted to build an experience that reflected what Pinterest does best, which is spark inspiration that people can bring into their real lives. The strategy was to create a space that invited people to meaningfully participate, rather than perform, and that meant going phone-free.”Â
While some marketers may fear that a no-phone policy would mean people wouldn’t share about their experience, Pinterest saw the opposite effect. Attendees engaged with the experience so deeply that they were more excited to talk about it, and the media saw the somewhat contradictory concept as the ultimate hook.Â
“That collab made unplugging a product, and that’s very smart,” Hopkins noted.Â
But as Hopkins explained, “it’s not just those who spend the biggest wins,” she explained. “And I think that’s exciting, as a marketer who has been on the brand side working both in beer and beauty. It’s around how you build a universe, not a booth. That makes it far more exciting and enticing for small- and medium-sized brands to actually win on stage at a place like Coachella. That is changing the landscape.”Â
One example of a smaller, new entrant is Seeking, a dating app targeting young, highly motivated professionals. Co-CEO Dana Rosewall saw REVOLVE Festival, the popular influencer-led event that runs adjacent to Coachella, as the perfect venue to engage with the app’s target audience.
“REVOLVE Fest is one of the few environments where the culture, aspiration, and identity all collide in real life,” Rosewall said. “To me, that's exactly where modern dating lives now. It's not just digital — it's actually lifestyle-driven. We wanted to shift how people feel about meeting someone on the platform and to drive brand awareness. The digital space is just so ridiculously crowded, so we were wondering how we can gain attention and really connect to people outside of the brand as human beings.”Â
With a branded space complete with a mechanical bull, Seeking promised concert-goers “the ride of a lifetime.” The result was a high-energy, shareable moment that directly complemented the high energy of the musical acts. But it is also connected to Seeking’s broader marketing position, which is to encourage its users to elevate their expectations and make bolder choices in their dating life.Â
The approach was a significant pivot from other REVOLVE and Coachella brands that focused on product testing, sampling, and conversion. “We’re a service-based company, so we knew we had to do something that made people feel something, not necessarily walk away with a tangible thing,” Rosewall said. “People had smiles, and they loved it, so it was a big success.”
For Seeking, the investment more than paid off thanks to the placement and the designed user journey. “We were right next to the stage, so the music was going and there was the whole atmosphere and flow of it,” Rosewall said. “We sat with our user journey team to map the entire moment. We asked about placement, where the brand ambassadors would be, and how we’d talk to them about the brand itself to integrate it seamlessly into the experience. We had to come at it from a holistic point of view.”
The bull-riding activation also got people interested and engaged with the brand in a fun way. They didn’t ask consumers to convert or over-commit on-site because, as Rosewall explained, “people were at a festival. They’re not going to want to sign up for a dating profile there. So, we extended the offer to after the weekend.”Â
She knew the app sign-ups would come later, with the post-engagement sharing, and that was more than okay. “The first question always for these types of things is, how can you make it shareable? Digital amplifies these experiences and takes them to the next level.
“Sometimes these in-real-life activations don't have a direct ROI,” she added. “It has a much more invisible layer of impact than brands sometimes perceive.”Â
Taking Category Risks: When B2B Meets B2CÂ
The brands that show up at REVOLVE Fest are aspirational by design. But sandwiched between the PatrĂłns, PopSockets, and Huda Beautys was Brex, a corporate card and spend management platform that typically targets CFOs, founders, and finance operators at high-growth companies.
It may seem like a complete mismatch, but it was a chess move that ultimately made Brex stand out. "REVOLVE Fest is not our traditional ICP nor buyers," said Nicole Thomas, Head of Partner Marketing at Brex. "The decision to show up here was a deliberate experiment."
Brex had been working with REVOLVE as a prospective customer, and through that process, Thomas got a firsthand look at how REVOLVE builds community around its brand. Its ecosystem of founders, DTC operators, and creators is the lifeblood of the brand community, and they all engage in the same cultural moments. The activation that followed, Brex Cafe, was a branded build-out on the REVOLVE Festival grounds, creating a complementary culinary experience that felt luxe yet carefree.
The hero menu item was a caviar-and-hot-dog pairing, which had an unexpected, high-low contrast that was shareable and still true to the brand. "You can close a Series B and still keep your company culture irreverent,” Thomas said. “That tension is what we wanted people to feel and post about."Â
Thomas had also been watching how major card networks approached brand building by making a card feel like access to a community rather than just a financial product. She wanted to test whether Brex could run a similar play in a space its customers already inhabited. "The window to be a first-mover in this space is closing fast," she said. "We were already in it before the conversation caught up."
Approximately 4,000 guests moved through Brex Cafe throughout the day. The company saved a small bundle of tickets to host a curated group of VIP brand operators and founders, which allowed the conversations to be tighter and more intentional. The experiences were crafted to serve two distinct purposes for two distinct audiences.Â
Brex didn’t broadcast its presence in advance. The awareness play was meant to happen in the moment and extend outward through two founder-influencers: Amy Joseph of MishMish Beauty and Jeannette Aranda of ElliotCole, whose content lived at the intersection of brand, business, and lifestyle. The organic user-generated content followed: Instagram content hit engagement rates of 7-9.5% against a 3.89% benchmark. A LinkedIn photo recap landed at 25.8% organic engagement, one of the strongest posts Brex launched all year. And then, unsolicited, the activation appeared in Vin Matano's B2B marketing highlights roundup, which covers B2B culture and creator strategy. This mention was external validation that Brex was on to something.Â
The primary takeaway for Thomas and her team was that the primary persona engaging with the experience skewed more toward brand and marketing than toward finance. This was an insight into the buyer’s journey, not a point of failure. "The sales motion for a brand founder who discovered Brex at a lifestyle event is not the same as someone who came to us through a fintech conference, and we need to build for that distinction."
Thomas walked out of REVOLVE Fest and Coachella weekend feeling “more conviction” about how the model could work for Brex in the future. “The two-layer model works. A broad brand activation drives awareness and cultural presence at scale, and a negotiated VIP component layered on top creates pipeline motion without those two things competing.”Â
In 2027, Brex aims to be more deliberate and content-forward. The team learned that an activation serves as a powerful content broadcast studio, so they need to design every element for social distribution first. “The in-person experience is the foundation rather than the end goal; that is the adjustment we will build into next year,” Thomas said. “We will probably refine the message to clarify Brex's core offering, making it obvious to influencers and viewers of our content and live activations. It is a constant process of walking the line between cultural relevance and adapting the brand to the environment, but also staying core to what our message is and who we are.”
The fact that this B2B fintech is already thinking about its second year at a music festival shows that the marketing experiment has graduated into a strategy.
Beyond ROI: When Culture Drives Connection
High-immersion cultural moments and activations create concentrated attention. They bring together like-minded individuals who are hyper-focused on the moment of connecting and enjoying together. The best brands are designing experiences that embed themselves in that moment and add distinct value that inspires people to share their experiences verbally and visually long after the event itself.Â
The real ROI of cultural experiences like Coachella lives across awareness, consideration, preference, and earned media spillover. And while Pinterest, Seeking, and Brex all have different goals, budgets, and priorities, they all intentionally designed experiences that captured the moment and activated a long-term media ripple effect. The weakest plays treat the moment as a photo op when it should really be a platform for community building.Â
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