With ticket buying patterns becoming unpredictable, brand partnerships have now become a primary source of revenue for some experience creators. This support however, doesn’t come easily — and what brands request in return can often leave experience creators feeling shortchanged.
Savvy communities have a finely-tuned radar for authenticity, and aligning with a brand that doesn’t fit at your experience could start to eat away at the special brand equity that you’ve worked so hard to build.
So what do strong brand partnerships look like? And how can you build ones that add value to your experience beyond just extra revenue?
After collaborating with the likes of Glastonbury, Nike, Tate Modern and more, Trippin have become experts at building authentic partnerships — so much so that they launched sister creative agency, All Corners, to empower other brands and creators to do the same.
In their Creators in Session masterclass, Co-Founder of Trippin, Sam Blenkinsopp, and Managing Director of All Corners, Natalia Christina, joined Easol’s Co-Founder Lisa Simpson for a session on collaborating with brands including:
How to attract the right brands for your experience business
The key to a successful brand partnership
What the partnership process looks like from A-Z
What to consider when creating experiential partnerships
How to measure the success of a brand partnership
Attracting brands as experience creators
As a global travel platform with an extensive network and audience, it doesn’t come as a surprise that many brands are knocking on Trippin’s door for collaborations. But attracting brands isn’t just about having a following — it’s about communicating and living your values.
To connect with brands, Sam invites experience creators to look inwards and create internal dialogues about what they stand for, what their mission is and what they value. Once that’s established, Sam encourages them to publicise it as much as possible and be transparent with their communities.
“At the end of the day, these brands are full of individuals that sit at home consuming content, just like us. And they tap into the same emotions that we do,” says Sam. “So I think just by putting that front and centre of our output and all our messaging has been the calling card for brands to want to work with us.”
Creators on Easol can keep their values front and centre at every stage of their customer journey through total ownership of their site. Customising one of Easol’s website themes is smooth and straightforward, meaning creators can easily build and optimise a site that communicates their experiences’s values.
Communication is key
For Trippin and All Corners, brand partnerships are like any other relationship — and there is no relationship without trust and communication.
“The markers of a good brand partnership are aligning on a values level and getting to know each other well,” says Natalia. “It comes down to communication and having that open two way dialogue.”
When partnerships do go wrong, it can almost always be traced back to a breakdown in communication. Trippin and All Corners recommends implementing practical tools and processes, such as briefing forms and regular check-ins.
Natalia adds, “It's important to know that on the other side of the brand partnership, there's also a team working on their own strategy and they've got their own annual plans and their own budget spend and things can change in a heartbeat. So always make sure that you're checking in and saying, ‘are we still aligned to the same outcome?’”
Creating experiential partnerships
Branching beyond the digital world, Trippin and All Corners also consider producing experiences as part of a brand partnership, to reach audiences in a way that impacts more deeply than any viral post.
In 2019, for example, Trippin partnered with Nike to create an immersive space over the course of a weekend, which celebrated ‘Heritage of Tomorrow’. The experience involved six local partners, short films, talks, workshops and DJs to round out the evening. Because the experiential partnership tapped into Trippin’s deeply held values of community, storytelling and inclusivity, it resonated authentically with target audiences.
However, experiential partnerships don’t always have to involve so many components. All Corners has found that small, intimate brand experiences can also make a big impact.
In collaboration with Merrell 1TRL, for example, All Corners brought together a group of six tastemakers for an immersive, curated event in East London’s Epping Forest. Not only did it showcase the product attractively, but it also connected with the guests in a meaningful way, which resulted in more authentic content.
“It was quite lo-fi in terms of the production lift but it really resonated with the people that were on the trip and it meant that everyone over-delivered in terms of their contracted posting,” says Natalia.
Experience creators already hold the keys to the kind of moments many brands crave to build out storytelling and foster community. What’s critical however in these partnerships, is ensuring they reach audiences beyond the experience itself. If you’re planning an experiential partnership, carefully consider the key touchpoints of your programming and how these special moments can be captured.
“A brand will know that they're buying into the cultural equity that your experience offers and they're being part of a moment that's really special,” says Sam. “But what they'll want to see is how does that live on?"
"How do other people that weren't there get to know and learn what we did that was really incredible? What's going to have a lot more resonance online and ultimately unlock more budgets from these brands is when you can show it from multiple different angles and that will create a lot more cut through and we'll have the opportunity to enable that partnership to live on to be something truly special.”
Moving culture forward
For Trippin and All Corners, measuring the success of a brand partnership is more than just views and clicks — it’s also about making real, lasting cultural impact.
“We're experiencing a lot of content churn. There's a lot out there. So I'd say the first thing is like, how is this additive to the event you're spotlighting or the story you're telling?” says Natalia.
When collaborating with brands, consider how your experiences can create something tangible to push the culture you’re in forward.
For example, All Corners produced an offline map for Notting Hill Carnival, one of the world's largest street festivals. Not only did it provide practical value to help attendees navigate the streets, but it also included storytelling around the history of the event.
Another key aspect of brand partnerships, especially when working with marginalised communities and subcultures is enforcing what All Corners call a ‘culture tax’. If you’re working with a big brand, 'walking the talk' and investing back into the community should be built into the partnership.
“It doesn't just need to be signing a check and that's the end of it. It could be something like providing mentorship,” says Natalia. “It's about creating something that feels enriching on both sides.”
Discover more masterclasses for pro experience creators
Creators in Session is a masterclass series designed to support and inspire experience creators and entrepreneurs within festivals, sports, adventure, wellness and more. Listen to the full episode of Building Authentic Brand Partnerships or check out other masterclasses like How to scale a global events business with Josh Robinson and How to build a truly sustainable festival with Josh Wendel.
Christian Murphy
Senior Marketing Manager, Festivals
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