At Coachella weekend one, brands were out in force. Justin Bieber’s Skylrk hosted a ‘Skylrk Oasis’ on the festival grounds, which will continue into weekend two (it’s Bieberchella, after all). Gap, Coachella’s exclusive clothing apparel sponsor and official merch partner, sold hoodies at its ‘Hoodie House’, also on the festival grounds. Off-site, Rhode hosted Rhode World, its first Coachella compound, alongside desert regulars including Revolve, Poosh, Guess, 818, and more.
A mix of CPG brands also got in on the action, from desert veteran (and influencer-friendly) Poppi, to companies like Starbucks and cleaning product brand Method. It’s a reflection of Coachella’s ascent from fashion and beauty influencer Olympics to pure brand play. “Now, ‘Brandchella’ is less about exclusivity and more about visibility,” says Vesper Ireland, founder of creative agency Vescorp. “In turn, the festival has traded some of its underground creative energy for mass cultural reach, which, for brands, is ultimately more valuable.”
As Coachella has strayed further into corporate, commercial territory, onlookers had wondered whether the festival had reached a tipping point. Instead, things seem to be pointing in the opposite direction. “Coachella is unquestionably a different festival from its indie origins — and in recent years, its subsequent success as a commercial juggernaut has shown signs of waning. However, we’ve witnessed a resurgence this year,” says Rebecca Hobbs, senior trends editor for retail and brand communications at trends intelligence agency Stylus. “In comparison to its 2025 edition, tickets sold out and brand activity has ramped up significantly.”
It’s no wonder brands want in on the action, experts agree. Coachella is one of the most influencer-dense moments of the year, with creators on-site and clamoring to post videos in exchange for access — to the festival, to exclusive events, or to products. A well-run activation during Coachella generates more organic reach in 72 hours than a paid media budget of the same size could buy in a month, Ireland says. “Everything at Coachella is commercial,” says Eve Lee, founder of The Digital Fairy, who dubs Coachella the “brand mecca” of festivals.
But not all brands manage to break through the noise. Social media management tool Metricool generally puts a ‘good’ engagement rate in the 1% to 3% range; an engagement rate above this would typically signal a highly engaged following — not just strong visibility, according to the company’s influencer marketing specialist Alexandra Caceres. At Coachella, though, this isn’t the case. “Looking at the data, [many] well-established brands are actually landing below that [range], while newer or more culturally relevant brands are seeing significantly higher engagement,” Caceres says. Brands including Guess, Revolve, and Poosh all had engagement rates under 1%, according to Metricool. Meanwhile, celebrity and influencer-founded brands have a clear advantage. Alix Earle’s new Reale Actives generated 8.12% engagement with its Reale Actives casa, followed by Rhode at 3.68%.
Showing up at Coachella may all but guarantee visibility, yet engagement is what indicates to brands that content is actually resonating and going beyond the initial view, Caceres says. If Coachella’s status as a content-fueled influencer hotbed upends traditional influencer marketing logic, how are brands breaking through?
Cash and cachet
Celebrity brands saw some of the biggest successes this past weekend. Naturally, these are the brands that also have money to spend. Rhode has ample marketing dollars, in part thanks to its $1 billion Elf acquisition last year. Same goes for Skylrk, whose headliner founder was the highest paid artist in Coachella history, earning $10 million for his set alone. Part of the reason celebrity brands are winning at Coachella, though, isn’t about the money, but the fact that their presence feels organic, Ireland says. “Founders behind brands like Rhode, 818, or Skylrk have been part of the Coachella ecosystem long before launching products,” she says. Their attendance, fashion associations, and social presence were already embedded in the festival’s narrative.” This helps their brand activations to read as storytelling extensions, rather than a cash grab from the outside in.
Still, those without the existing cultural cachet can make it work. Poppi maintained a solid engagement rate of 1.39% by focusing its content on well-known and loved creators, rather than the drinks themselves, Caceres says. Following its 2024 Casa Poppi success, thanks to a partnership with Earle, the prebiotic soda brand hosted entire houses for popular creators, including the ‘Jake Estate’ for Jake Shane and ‘Mick Mansion’ for Mickey Gordon. Each hosted their friend group at the house, generating a halo of content not centered on the brand, but created in Poppi’s world. Starbucks, on the other hand, hosted influencers in the desert, who posted content repeatedly thanking the brand directly for hosting them but only generated 0.12% engagement.
This also means there’s an untapped opportunity for smaller brands — with smaller budgets — to get in on the action, whether by integrating with creators already attending the festival, or piggy-backing off of existing, bigger brand activations. At ‘818 Outpost’, for instance, non-competitor brands including Salt & Stone, Tangle Teezer, Urban Decay, and Youth to the People hosted booths and giveaways. The lines at each were long, filled with influencers sipping on 818 tequila, bulging branded bags under their arms. “If your audience overlaps with the Coachella demographic, it’s valuable to show up in some capacity,” Ireland says.
The grounds question
Though the likes of Skylrk and Gap, as well as earplugs brand Loop and Neutrogena (promoting its sunscreen), were present on the festival grounds, many brands that showed up in the desert did so at their own venues, banking on flocks of influencers and industry insiders to capture and distribute content. They delivered.
There are benefits to both approaches. “For on-site activations, you’re getting real-time content that naturally brings viewers at home into the experience and moments,” Caceres says. “Off-site activations allow for more control, stronger storytelling, and often higher production value. Both have pros and cons, but ultimately don’t guarantee engagement on their own.”
For Gap, showing up on-site was a no-brainer, says CMO Fabiola Torres. “There’s so much energy on the ground at Coachella. Being on-site allows us to tap directly into that energy and make Gap part of the experience in real time,” she says. “We intentionally designed ‘Hoodie House’ to be accessible across both VIP and General Admission to make this experience available to as many festival-goers as possible.” The activation still included influencers, she adds; Gap tapped a selection of talent to wear and post about the hoodies to amplify the message. Opting to serve attendees over adding another influencer house into the mix was a smart move, says JT Barnett, founder of creator agency Core. “It makes the festival experience better and creates a stronger emotional connection to Gap.”
Some people go to the desert without even having a ticket to Coachella, just for the off-site activations. It makes clear how separate some of these activations are from the main event. Aside from Rhode leveraging Bieber’s performance with the ‘The Biebers’ collab, there wasn’t enough connection between what was happening on-stage and what brands were doing off-site, Ireland says. “Too many activations felt standalone rather than embedded within the cultural moment that is Coachella,” she says. “If you’re going to invest at this level, there needs to be a clearer answer to why Coachella?” Lee doesn’t believe this lack of integration is necessarily a bad thing. Instead, she says, brands activating off-site that are almost competing with the main event may draw a line between those who are there for the music, and those who want to immerse themselves in brand culture.
More important than the location of a brand activation is the communication around it, says Metricool’s Caceres. “The most effective is a hybrid situation, creating an entire ecosystem,” she explains. “This could be pre-event teasers, gifting, activations that then lead into IRL moments, followed by recaps, highlights, and a natural excitement for the next event.” This is what Skylrk got right, she says: the brand hardly posted during Coachella (it left that to attendees), but is now beginning to roll out content between weekends one and two.
Member perks
For most brands, Coachella is about high reach and high engagement, but there are a subset of membership-based brands that travel to the desert because they know their clientele will be in town — and want to make their lives easier while there. “We don’t just get you in, we shape how you experience it,” says Gabriella Shteiman, co-founder of Members-only reservation platform Dorsia, which is activating on- and off-site across both weekends. “It’s no longer just about being ‘on the list’, it’s about how the experience actually feels once you’re there. Access today is more dimensional: it’s being stageside, backstage, or eating Nobu while you watch David Guetta.”.
LA-based members club-meets-clothing rental service Wild West Social House, for instance, took over a barn close to the festival, offering clothing rentals and sales for members and their guests. “What’s better than getting to pack light for a trip? Especially one as disorienting as a music festival,” says co-founder Kyle Julian Skye, who adds that the LA location has historically been disproportionately busy in the lead-up to the festival. Dorsia, meanwhile, is partnering for the third time on its ‘Desert Nights’ afterparty, hosted each night of the festival, both weekends, at private estate Zenyara. Typically, the events are invite-only, but Dorsia members get access to ticket reservations.
On the festival grounds, Dorsia doubled up its festival presence with a Nobu omakase experience bookable on the app. Soho House hosted a Soho Desert House pop-up space, as the company reportedly looks to ramp up its US presence with renovations in New York and progress on its long-rumored upstate New York Farmhouse property, and California openings including Soho Desert House in Palm Springs and Soho Ranch House in Sonoma.
Other brands tap into this same logic of exclusivity, without the actual membership component. One music agent jokingly likened the Guess afterparty, hosted at the brand’s compound, to the Pentagon. This year, the brand hosted two — one on Friday; the other on Sunday. These were weekend highlights for the brand, says Nicolai Marciano, chief new business development officer at Guess Inc., which hosted influencers at its Guess Compound for the fifth year running. “Two very different vibes and audiences that both resonated really well with the attendees,” he says. “Our biggest success is creating unforgettable moments — both physically and digitally.”
As Coachella reaches peak brand activation, is there any room left to break through the noise? “One of the most underpriced opportunities right now is weekend two,” says Barnett. People are still highly engaged, and housing and production costs are drastically lower than weekend one, he says. For Wild West, this year’s weekend one-only approach was a tester. “We felt we wanted to test out the mobile pop-up experience to see if we can expand on it for next year,” says co-founder and COO Max Feldmann. The option for last-minute outfit changes proved popular, he says.
It’s an opportunity for brands to get creative, too. “Rather than competing for visibility, brands should shift their focus to servicing attendees,” Ireland says, floating on-the-ground customer acquisition, real-time feedback, and A/B testing across experience, product, and messaging as possible focuses. “Brands that shift their mindset from visibility to performance can find weekend two just as valuable.”
Correction: Updated to reflect that Poppi’s activation with Alix Earle was in 2024, not 2025; and the Guess’s second party was on Sunday, not Saturday.
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