Throughout the summer, fans convened over themed food and drink, elaborate decor, and shared giggles galore to watch new episodes of the teen drama The Summer I Turned Pretty as it was released weekly on Amazon Prime Video. Now, as the teenage love triangle drama has come to a close (for now), ABC’s long-running dance competition series Dancing With the Stars is inspiring similar get-togethers.
No matter the show, the girlies are gathering for watch parties, and the brands are taking note.
A watch party can technically be for any kind of viewing event, but they are typically tied to live broadcasts and are especially common among sports fans (case in point: the Super Bowl). Lately though, content outside of the sports realm and attracting primarily women viewers has inspired the same kind of social gatherings, creating a marketing opportunity that particularly appeals to brands with audience demographics similar to the viewers themselves. Beverage brand Swoon, skin-care brand Hume Supernatural, and fragrance brand Candier are just some of the brands that have been part of the excitement.
Whether the watch parties are big or small, the brand marketers that we spoke to said these events offer unique alignment and a sense of camaraderie and cultural relevance that they are eager to get in on.
“It’s really about supporting people in the things that they’re passionate about, because those really intimate environments is where so much of that passion shines through,” Liza Tagliati, VP of marketing at Hume Supernatural, told Marketing Brew.
Keeping it cozy
In September, TikTok creator Taylor Buck, who has just over 2,000 followers on the platform, hosted a small watch party for The Summer I Turned Pretty. As part of it, she put together and handed out goodie bags full of various lifestyle products to guests, which included gifted products from Hume Supernatural and Candier.
Tagliati told us that it’s not unusual for Hume Supernatural to have creators requesting PR and offering to collaborate, but Buck requested for the brand to get involved with the watch party after the creator had organically posted social media content about the brand on her own.
For Hume Supernatural, the appeal of working with Buck around the watch party wasn’t necessarily in the event itself, but rather the creator who was hosting it.
“We really evaluate the authenticity that those requests come in with,” Tagliati said. “If it’s someone who we can tell is passionate about the brand, then it’s the kind of thing that it’s so worth it for us to support, because we know that someone who’s passionate about our product and our brand [is] handing it to 20 of their closest friends and is going to be like, ‘You guys, this is the one. You have to try it.’”
Fragrance brand Candier was similarly interested in the creator connection when it worked with Buck on the watch party gift bags. Marketing Manager Paula Quinones-Roman said she had previously seen Buck’s content, particularly around the show, and she felt that any social content that Buck chose to make from gifted content would be worth the investment.
Plus, several Candier candle scents connect loosely to the show itself, including a hot-cocoa scent that may remind fans of a scene featuring the character Conrad, and as well as a cereal scent called I Can’t Adult Today, which could be seen as poking fun at the character Jeremiah.
“A lot of our community was following the show. I personally watched the show,” Quinones-Roman told Marketing Brew. “Our candles really align with this, and we need to be doing more of this, because our community loves it.”
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Though Quinones-Roman said Candier’s gifting strategy doesn’t explicitly require creators to post social content in exchange for product, and Tagliati said Hume Supernatural’s gifting approach centers a “qualitative analysis” of the community impact a creator might bring over measured results, both brand marketers acknowledged that the group element of a watch party can extend the potential social content and brand exposure opportunity.
Get all your girls
Some brands are taking advantage of big and small watch parties alike—especially when the party’s show of choice is a natural extension of an existing partnership.
Swoon, a zero-sugar beverage brand that was founded in 2020, has since June partnered with Rylee Arnold, a social media personality and dancer on Dancing With the Stars, on a custom version of its pink lemonade. When the show returned for its 34th season this September, Ella Liu, marketing manager, said the brand saw the excitement around DWTS watch parties as an opportunity to amplify the brand’s connection to and recognition among fans.
“The people watching the show have some sort of knowledge of who Rylee is. They’ve probably heard her story before and have already fallen in love with her. So really, it’s taking that as an opportunity to show them she’s made this drink,” Sui said.
For the show’s premiere, Swoon’s team put out a call on social media to anyone hosting a DWTS watch party to fill out a form for a chance to receive the Rylee Arnold beverage as part of a 1,000-case giveaway. In addition, the brand caught wind of a bigger watch event for the season’s first episode hosted at Mr. Purple, a rooftop venue in New York City managed by Gerber Group.
Sophie Gerber, who oversees marketing at Gerber Group and worked on the event, told us Swoon’s team reached out to the venue looking to supply the watch party with their beverage to be used in bespoke cocktails. Though it was not an official partnership between the beverage and hospitality brand, Sui said showing up at the event gave the whole thing an amplified feeling.
“Let’s say a hundred people are going to Mr. Purple, and only five of them know that [Rylee] has a Swoon can, but they all know who she is,” Sui said. “It’s just a great opportunity to get that in front of them.”
Swoon’s partnership with Arnold ran through the end of September, and Sui said that this September’s monthly social impressions increased 900% compared to last year, which she credited to the combined effect of watch parties and Arnold’s special-edition drink.
It’s not just CPG brands seeing returns either—venues like Mr. Purple have seen the growing popularity of non-sports watch parties affect their business, too. Gerber said that these events are just another way to define Mr. Purple as more than just a rooftop bar, especially as people have directly reached out to organize other TV show watch parties.
“Tuesday nights is when Dancing with the Stars is on. Everyone’s working in New York City, everyone’s hustling,” Gerber said. “Restaurants and bars and clubs and all these places in New York City are not all just meant for staying up until 4am. There are pockets of time where you could have an intimate conversation and an intimate, nice experience.”