A Short Rhode, with a Long Wait
6 hrs in line, 1 lip treatment later -- here's what I learned.
It’s no secret that I love Rhode’s marketing. If you’ve ever opened that can of worms with me in conversation, you know that I think Rhode is setting the stage for Gen Z DTC marketing, specifically in the beauty industry.
So it’s no surprise that when I received a message in my inbox on Sunday evening advertising the Rhode Booth pop-up coming to Yorkville this Tuesday, I obviously wanted to go. To preface, I hadn’t tried any product by them before, so when they said “free lip-treatment” a part of me wanted to see if it was any good, both out of curiosity and for experiential marketing research from the attendee’s point of view.
Fast-forward to the day of and I am standing in line at 8:24 a.m., with a few hundred girls that all had one thing in mind, “I want to be there early”. Needless to say, the urgency to be there on time and the demand for these lip treatments were pretty high. By 9:15 a.m., the first 500 attendees had secured silver wristbands. The line had stretched from Yorkville Ave to Davenport Rd. Keep in mind, the booth didn’t open until 10:30 a.m.🫣
As each hour passed, I started writing down the reasons why pop-ups like this are a genius marketing strategy for companies, especially Gen Z DTC brands.
The Social Spectacle - Increases Brand Awareness, Brand Engagement, Brand Equity and Customer Loyalty, Customer Acquisition
“What’s this line for?” A question most of us attendees got at least five times as we patiently waited. The genuine curiosity from by-passers was encouraging as they would often reply to our answers with a “good luck!”. Some of them wanted to join the line, however majority of them stood there and took photos of the local spectacle.
Whether they posted their pov on social media, or sent it to their friend, it was surely a conversation starter in the moment or later that day and perhaps even a few days later. Point being, is this increased organic brand awareness and drove engagement to Rhode’s website and social media. Especially for those that couldn’t attend the pop-up, for whatever reason, they might’ve just purchased the product online.
Speaking of lines, a line of this caliber gives Mrs. Bieber’s brand its own social proof. Considering the A-List celebrity Founder and Creative Director wasn’t in attendance of this pop-up, just goes to show that the brand has built a strong product marketing strategy that stands on it’s own.
These products have earned a high brand equity with its customers, because once you’ve waited in line for over six hours for a lip treatment, customers will feel an indebted sense of loyalty going forward when it comes to purchasing from Rhode. This event has a low CAC if you look at the ROI of projects like these. There’s a high chance these attendees will have a higher LTV and AOV for the brand’s products if they had a positive experience with the brand.
Materializing Online to In-Person - Brand Activation: Interacting with Rhode Team, Products, and Audience
Positive experiences are what a customer remembers when they go home at night. Their last experience with the brand will be the first thing they think about when they go to repurchase from a company.
Thankfully, I can honestly say it was a positive experience. The team of ‘helpers’ that came around to collect trash, hand out wristbands, and gave us water bottles were genuinely nice folks. They were eager to answer any questions we had, keeping the lines of communication between the brand and the attendees super open.
This is an ideal experience for an online company to deliver to its target audience. The booth was incredibly on brand, as was the location. The Biebers have been spotted at the Hazleton hotel on multiple occasions, so it was really no surprise when Rhode chose to host the event in the heart of Yorkville.
This can also waiver any doubts that a hesitant customer may have had before purchasing from Rhode, as they got to experience the brand first hand. It also fosters a more intimate brand-customer relationship if customers see that a brand is making an effort to interact with them—something many companies might not be able to do due to budgetary or product marketing restraints.
Little do the attendees know they are really the poster-customers for social media as well as large focus groups for research and data collection.
Data Collection - KYC, Product Preferences
I’d like to take a second to say hello to the data analysts that got my name and number. Turns out all you have to do is ask!
It’s literally no surprise that a company would take this as an opportunity to collect information about its attendees. Just another 500 numbers and emails collected in less than 8 hrs.
For those of you that are confused of how they collected our data so swiftly, after you were done in the booth, you were asked if you wanted a digital copy of the photos. Obviously after waiting in line for six hours, any normal person would say yes to feel like they got the most out of the experience.
Since the experience is nearly 60 seconds per attendee you are pretty rushed to submit your info, and there was that sacred little box before the submit button that opted the attendee into more promotional content from Rhode.
In addition to KYC data, they can also collect the data on the best performing lip treatment. Considering they’ve collected the data from across the world from five large pop-up destinations, they can determine which of these limited time lip treatments performed best in different geographical demographics, as well as which ones to bring back in future or to put on their permanent roster.
Genius. 🧠
Low Cost, Targeted Advertising - Reaching the Desired Audience and Their Counterparts (feeds off of heard mentality)
As I’ve mentioned a few times throughout this article, we the attendees, were a local spectacle and a social phenomenon. The buzz that this Toronto pop-up had an alone was more than I think the Rhode team was anticipating. People, like me, were making TikToks about the experience and received an overwhelming amount of engagement because of the 6hr wait for a 60 second experience.
Regardless, every video I saw had high engagement which is all low-cost, highly targeted advertising for Rhode. The attendees in the line most likely posted about their experience, their lip treatment as well as their photo booth pictures. Which is comparable to a walking Toronto billboard.
Imagine you have 500 attendees, the reach of all of those audiences combined, with a high chance that their audiences are Canadian, probably totalling somewhere between 50,000 - 150,000 (low estimate) would have seen something related to Rhode’s pop-up in Toronto that day.
Assuming that the attendees posted 1 - 3 posts about the pop-up, their audience was being re-marketed the brand a couple times that day.
This is the most accurate way to map out an audience to advertise to, it doesn’t get more specific than that.
Rhode Recap
Overall, this was a successful pop-up. Do I think there’s room for improvement? Of course! (There always is). They kept their pop-up true to their brand's roots, which is why it resonated so well with the audience.
If there’s anything DTC companies could take away from Rhode’s booth is that they need to create experiential marketing campaigns too. Building a social spectacle to drive brand awareness, increase social engagement, and boost brand loyalty and equity is one of the fastest and most targeted ways to reach an audience. Leaving the customer with an unforgettable experience of the brand.
More insights to come. 🎀
Bye for now,
Emma