Upscale brands flock to the Hamptons to sell to the 1%

It’s 10 a.m. on a sunny Saturday morning in the Hamptons, and showerhead company Jolie is hosting yoga at its private summer home. Jolie-branded yoga mats are spread around the pool as a handful of fit, tan young women prepare for class. Before yoga, there’s a brief speech about the brand’s relationship with water (hence the poolside location); otherwise, the event feels minimally branded and relaxed.

But there are serious business goals behind this effort and similar Hamptons events this summer from brands such as Flamingo Estate, Coterie, Left on Friday and Juliet Wine that have prioritized the posh Long Island vacation locale as a place to connect with wealthy consumers, potential financial backers and content creators.

It’s not a cheap endeavor. While Jolie declined to comment on the size of its investment, a listing on Zillow shows that the home rents for more than $75,000 a month. The steep price tag is indicative of the region, which caters to the 1%. In May, the median listing home price in the Hamptons was $2.8 million, according to Realtor.com.

The area’s homeowners and summer renters are an especially attractive crowd for brands marketing along the Hamptons shore this summer. As the gap between the lower and upper class continues to widen, these brands increasingly have a desire and motivation to be associated with the 1% — after all, with the middle class shrinking, that’s who can afford their upmarket products.

Jolie’s filtered shower head goes for $165, Flamingo Estate’s products include $80 jars of spicy strawberries and $250 jars of honey and Left on Friday’s swimsuits include several priced over $100. Those are just a small sample of the upscale versions of everyday products sold by some of the brands marketing in the Hamptons this summer.

Sunset boat rides

Jolie, which positions itself as a beauty product company rather than a home improvement brand, has a particularly extensive list of Hamptons summer activations. The brand rented the aforementioned Hamptons home for the entire summer, and its team of three has taken up residence there with no plans to return to to the city until the leaves start falling off the picturesque trees in the backyard. 

Along with its weekly yoga classes around the home’s private pool, Jolie has plans for other events such as a sunset boat ride for friends of the brand, according to Arjan Singh, Jolie’s co-founder head of brand marketing and operations.

Jolie invites “friends of the brand, those we want to connect more with, those we admire, [and] those that will make good company,” to its free events, Singh said.

Jolie said it isn’t paying influencers to document its ritzy coastal happenings for the masses.

“This is not an influencer house. We don’t have a revolving door of capital “I” influencers coming in — it’s more just friends,” Singh said.

Although content about Jolie will inevitably end up on social media via these events, even without influencer deals, Singh said that’s not the main reason Jolie is spending the money it takes to be out east this summer.

The best case scenario for Jolie’s Hamptons activations, he said, would be ​​meeting cool people, such as other brand founders who are interested in collaborating, editors who can write impactful pieces about Jolie or future financial partners. Jolie has spent the past three summers doing similar events in the Hamptons. Singh didn’t specify which connections, if any, the brand made through its prior Hamptons marketing efforts.

While brands in the Hamptons might downplay the influencer effect, the events seem tailor-made for social media, according to one expert. Katie Keating, co-founder of ad agency Fancy, said that “cool people” or “their friends” is “coded language for influencers, and ‘influencer’ is coded language for anyone who claims authority on a subject.”

“Regardless of nomenclature, the brands plan to capture content, they know people will be posting on their own channels, they know their ideal customers will feel a connection to the party and want to be a part of it if only they too were in the Hamptons,” Keating added. 

Even if someone can’t afford to spend $1,000 on their share of a rental home for a weekend in Montauk, they might be able to afford a $165 filtered shower head that makes them feel like they’re living the same lifestyle, she added. After all, ensuring that a brand is associated with an aspirational lifestyle — and those who have the privilege of living it — could pay off in the long run, even if those impressions come at a high cost, Keating said.

“These products are not thriving based on the 1% alone, but the 1%’s embrace can do a lot for the aspirations of the rest,” she noted. “Even if it’s expensive to have an event in the Hamptons, and even if they’re not paying influencers to post, it is getting posted about. The word is spreading, and every impression counts,” Keating added.

Coterie, the upscale baby product brand backed by model Karlie Kloss, threw a more ephemeral and equally lavish Hamptons event at a private Bridgehampton estate on June 7. Its “Summer Splash” event, in partnership with Gwyneth Paltrow’s upscale brand marketplace Goop, celebrated Coterie’s new swim diaper launch and partnership with swimsuit brand Hunza G. Influencer mothers such as Quincy Davis, Brittany Xavier, Jenny Cipoletti, and DJ Pamela Tick made the invite-only guest list.

The subject line of an email sent to Ad Age summed up the goal: “Coterie’s summer campaign targets affluent Hamptons moms.” It’s the brand’s first Hamptons marketing effort, Jess Jacobs, Coterie’s chief brand officer, said.

Both Goop and Coterie have many customers who spend their summers in the Hamptons, making the event feel like a natural way to kick off the summer for both brands, Jacobs said. Coterie secured a billboard with Quan Media that sits alongside the highway New Yorkers take from the city to the Hamptons.

A month’s supply of Coterie diapers retails for $90, whereas a month’s supply of Pampers diapers sells for about $63. 

Coterie declined to share figures around marketing spend for its events. Its decision to activate in the Hamptons rather than, say, at the Jersey Shore, (a comparatively cheaper beach vacation option near Coterie’s Nolita home base) was about “trying to be where our customers are, especially over the summer,” Jacobs said. Coterie’s largest customer base is in New York City, she added.

Other upscale direct-to-consumer brands, including Flamingo Estate, Left on Friday, and Juliet Wine have planned events or pop-ups in the Hamptons throughout the summer, too.

Flamingo Estate, a brand known for selling $250 jars of honey produced in celebrities’ backyards, is in its second year of partnering with clothing brand Mytheresa to take over an East Hampton autobody shop for a pop-up.

“The middle class is shrinking, but so is the line between branded and organic content,” Keating said, adding that “algorithms force brands to pay for impressions, so gone are the days of organic community building. Brands need more people to post more branded content that the algorithms can feed into many small groups of people with shared interests or tastes … until consumers think ‘it feels like everyone has a water-filtering shower head. Should I?’”

This article originally appeared in Ad Age.

Phoebe Bain, Ad Age , 2024-06-19 21:51:40

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