Put Your Brand On It

The “Espresso” singer teamed up with Cash App for three branded events in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

The best-case scenario for a brand is for their end-users to be thinking about them every night. Isn’t that sweet? I guess so.

For those who have lived under a rock since the summer, that’s a reference to Sabrina Carpenter’s enormous hit “Espresso.” And for everyone who knows the song, congratulations, it’s now stuck in your head, too.

The joke will make sense in a second. Walk with me here…

Carpenter, through a partnership with Cash App, is hosting three pop-up events in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, where her team is leaning into the theme of coffee and “Espresso” to create “Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet Café,” borrowing the title of her hit 2024 album.

This idea of a pop-up shop, complete with branded merchandise, for a pop star isn’t new. Olivia Rodrigo, for example, just partnered with Spotify for a branded experience in New York to commemorate the release of her album GUTS. And it’s not just musical artists – TV shows and streaming services get their own pop-up treatments, too.

However, what sets Carpenter’s campaign apart is the savvy angle of tying in the coffee pun with the coffee shop idea, bringing in another trend in experiential marketing. When you think of your local coffee shop, what do you picture aside from baristas in cool clothes and a display of baked goods? You can probably picture the merchandise for sale and branded packaging – things like T-shirts, mugs, tote bags, thermoses and packaging for coffee beans or tea.

A coffee shop lends itself nicely to merchandise, which is why the likes of Ralph Lauren has used it as a marketing medium in luxury getaway locations across the world.

By tapping into the coffee universe, Carpenter and her corporate partners find themselves at an intersection of different marketing avenues and seem to have accomplished everything you’d hope a branded pop-up of this nature can do. Those include wins promo pros working on experiential marketing initiatives can try to engineer for their clients too, such as:

Build the Brand’s Reach

The main goal of any branded campaign is to spread brand awareness. Thinking just of the promotional products space, you can see that the Carpenter team did that through things like drinkware, T-shirts and various print products.

The merchandise table works very much in the same way it would at a concert, but this way the brand –Sabrina Carpenter – comes to the fans rather than forcing them to pay any price of admission.

Drive Online Engagement

In an age where everything is online, tactile promotional products and experiences should be designed to have an extended life through social media sharing. There needs to be something that drives people to leave their homes and potentially wait in long lines for something. The opportunity to post fun pictures on social media can be significant motivation.

When done well, every conceivable photo angle in a pop-up experience is a good one. There are printed displays to be backdrops and walls, and plenty of eye-catching branded items within view or to be used as props for photos. There are QR codes aplenty. There are dedicated hashtags.

For sure, there should not be any forgetting whose event you’re at.

Strengthen Partner Brands

This café pop-up is, ostensibly, for Sabrina Carpenter. Still, it’s also for Cash App, which harnessed Carpenter’s social capital at the moment to gain some hip points with would-be users.

And of course, let’s not forget the actual coffee shops that transformed into this branded vehicle temporarily. They put their normal brands on hold for a minute, but it was a smart move: Crowds of people, many of them potentially first-time patrons, have experienced sitting in the café and could come back again.

In New York, Carpenter and Cash App took over Partners Coffee. In Chicago, it was Happy Monday. This week, Angelinos can visit Verve Coffee in West Hollywood.

To add to the Cash App integration, customers who use a Cash App Visa card to buy stuff will receive a 30% discount on their purchase – up to $40, according to Sprudge.

The music marketing landscape has changed drastically as a result of streaming, social media and the COVID-19 pandemic. Artists are meeting their fans in new ways. And, after all, an artist is a brand at the end of the day, and fans are customers. It sounds crass to put it so transactionally, but it’s the truth.

Looking beyond the music world, any brand can take a piece of their identity or their brand story, expand on it, and create a memorable experience out of it. If they can meet their customers and potential customers where they live, shop and eat, that’s even better. Finally, sparing no detail through print products, promotional giveaways and catchy design can turn something that feels like a sales pitch into a fun day out with memories to last a lifetime – both in their hearts and on their social media feeds.

End-buyers ages 55+ say they spend a quarter of their marketing budget on promo.

ASI’s exclusive research reveals client buying habits in eight markets and across multiple demographics.

ASI Research is wrapping up our new series profiling the people distributors work with most closely: end-buyers. Each week we released a new data set that spotlights one of eight markets and looks at end-buyers through demographics such as age, gender, region and company size.

This week, our research focuses on promotional products end-buyers ages 55+, the last of several age demographics surveyed throughout the United States.

The percentage of older Americans, particularly those older than 65, who hold a job today has nearly quadrupled since the mid-1980s, a Pew Research Center analysis found – meaning that this demographic is becoming a more important segment to consider in the corporate gifting market. According to ASI’s 2023 Ad Impressions Study, some of the most influential promotional products for consumers ages 55+ include outerwear, umbrellas and performance wear.

ASI’s 2024 end-buyer research reports that end-buyers in this demographic value a distributor that offers comprehensive services, with half naming “doing all the work” as an important distributor benefit – more than any other end-buyer segment surveyed. Additionally, promotional products end-buyers ages 55+ are the most likely age demographic to give promo to prospects and to pay a premium for Made-in-the-USA products.