3 Successful Brand Trips That Changed the Marketing Industry

What is a Brand Trip?

Have you ever seen a TikTok or reel of your favorite influencers posting from the same beach resort and using the same products in their 'Get Ready With Me' videos?

They were probably all invited on a brand trip.

A brand trip is when a company invites influencers, content creators, or community members on an all-expense-paid trip to boost the company's brand awareness or promote a new product launch.

In exchange, the company will require invitees to create content on their personal social media platforms promoting the products and the brand.

Over the years, brand trips have been proven to be one of the most effective marketing strategies. Brand trips allow brands to connect with influencers, build credibility with their community members, and create authentic content.

This can lead to new customers, higher revenue, and a stronger relationship with their existing customers. Now, let's dive into the different types of brand trips and how they became successful!

Sponsored Brand Trips

Swan Beauty X Acquired Style's Bachelorette Party

Sponsored brand trips are when a brand pays for all the expenses of a trip to promote brand awareness. This would usually include meals, accommodations, and flights for all members of the trip.

Unlike influencer and community member trips, this type of trip requires much less planning and organizing because you do not have to create an extensive itinerary or spend time sourcing which influencers to invite.

Many brands do not do sponsored trips because they have less control over what the influencers will post, and the costs can become high depending on the influencers' demands.

A successful brand trip that occurred in April 2026 was Swan Beauty sponsoring Bridgette Pheloung's, also known as AcquiredStyle on TikTok, bachelorette party in St. Barts.

The bachelorette party was labeled as an extravagant trip with free Swan Beauty products, a private jet, a luxury villa, and $1,600 valued goodie bags for 16 of her friends who attended the trip.

But you may be asking: Who is Swan Beauty?

That's the question everybody was asking when Bridgette started posting content on her TikTok about the brand's $795 AI beauty mirror.

Swan Beauty is a five-month-old beauty technology company that wanted more brand exposure, and instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on paid ads or sending out PR mailers to influencers, they decided to work with only one influencer and sponsor her entire trip.

Before the trip occurred, Swan Beauty had fewer than 3,000 followers on Instagram, but once the sponsored trip with Bridgette kicked off, Swan Beauty's follower count skyrocketed up to 4,400 in just a matter of days!

They went from a business that nobody had heard of to one everybody was talking about.

Influencer Brand Trips

Rhode Snow Club

Influencer brand trips are the most well-known type of brand trip because this is what an everyday social media watcher would see on their feed. According to Revolve's Chief Brand Officer, Raissa Gerona, 70% of Revolve's sales were driven by an influencer, which proves that influencer marketing has a strong impact on brand awareness and revenue.

Influencer trips usually require a lot of planning, such as inviting creators, planning fun activities, and making a list of required deliverables for the influencers. While planning all the little details, companies have to make sure they're still maintaining their brand values.

An example of an influencer brand trip is the Rhode Snow Club. Rhode invited a group of content creators and influencers like Katie Fang, who currently has over 6 million TikTok followers, to a luxurious mountain view ski resort in Big Sky, Montana, to promote their new winter collection, the Caffeine Reset Mask and Peptide Lip Boost.

Other brands have done ski-themed brand trips, but Rhode did an exceptional job balancing the aesthetic of a cozy winter girls' trip while staying true to their philosophy of reboot and reset. One of the activations consisted of a snow station where influencers were able to try out and review the new products.

Every single detail, from the color palette to the location and the influencers invited, was visually appealing and cohesive to the Rhode brand. This allowed influencers to seamlessly produce content and promote Rhode's new products to their audiences, which generated buzz for their new product launch.

Although this trip was exclusive to influencers and content creators, they opened up the pop-up shop for their community members to try out their new unreleased products before it was sold on their website.

Most brand trips are exclusively for influencers, and typically, community members are usually only able to watch through their screens.

This was an absolute game-changer because both influencers and community members were able to create UGC (User-Generated Content) for the brand to create more hype on the product release.

Community Member Trips

CocoKind

Instead of paying influencers, brands can take a more thoughtful approach by doing a community member trip! Community member trips are when a brand only invites loyal customers to attend a fun, all-expense-paid trip and get treated like a celebrity or influencer.

Cocokind is the most notorious brand for doing community member brand trips. Cocokind first started organizing these types of trips in January 2025 because the founder, Priscilla Tsai, found that spending $20-$30 on PR mailers and sending them out to random influencers was not making a significant impact.

Instead, Cocokind wanted to take a more customer-centric approach by treating their customers like they were on an influencer brand trip.

None of the community members were required to have a high number of followers, a high engagement rate, or even post about the trip itself. So you're probably wondering, how does this marketing strategy work if nobody is posting about the trip?

It actually all starts before the trip! When Cocokind announced they were doing a community-based trip in Napa Valley, applicants had to submit a 60-second video on why they love the brand and tag them in the video, which generated thousands of impressions.

The next trip they did in Miami, Florida, had over 1,400 applicants, which is a 745% increase from the first trip, and they generated over $3.7 million in earned media value!

The Future of Brand Trips

Influencer and sponsored brand trips have recently been receiving some backlash for being out of touch and un-relatable they are. Many consumers are concerned as to whether they really love the product/brand, or just want to hop on a free vacation.

It is important to diversify the types of brand trips to build a deeper connection with everyone who is involved with the brand. Building relationships with influencers can be very important for brand trips, but it is also important to build a strong relationship with community members who are loyal to the brand.

Influencer brand trips will always benefit companies and generate brand awareness, but our world does not consist only of influencers. Community member brand trips could be the next wave and ultimately be a game-changer in the marketing industry!

🪽 Written by Edy Chat