Partiful doesn’t want to be “unhinged”—it wants to be ubiquitous

When a character on HBO show The Pitt told another to “keep an eye out for the Partiful” this season, it was the cultural validation that the event invite platform had been looking for.

“Some people had reached out like, ‘Oh, I thought you paid for that,’” Shreya Murthy, co-founder and CEO of Partiful, told us. “We found out when the episode aired, and our jaws were on the floor.”

Partiful’s goal is to become so embedded in people’s lives that the brand name becomes a default noun for sending an invite, like “calling an Uber” or “using a Kleenex,” Murthy said. Beyond building a product that has attracted millions of users, its marketing focus centers on amplifying organic marketing moments as they appear to build long-term cultural relevance. As Luis Ocampo, who leads external initiatives at Partiful, recently wrote on LinkedIn, “A TV writer doesn’t put your product in a script because of your brand Twitter. They put it in because it’s just so embedded in how their world works that it would feel weird to leave it out.”

In other words, Murthy said, “We found that chasing consistency has been healthier for us than trying to chase virality.”

Fashionably late

Partiful’s rising status hasn’t just been noted on TV, but also in print. The brand received organic media attention this month for its newest in-app feature, which allows partygoers to secretly identify their crushes ahead of events in the hopes of matching. After the company took off in 2020, Murthy said legacy media coverage helped legitimize the brand among job candidates, investors, and future users. Now, organic mentions of the brand help drive Partiful’s product awareness behind its primarily Gen Z users, she said, which, along with millennials, make up the “vast majority” of the app’s user base.

“It’s a nice shortcut to reaching those demographics because they’re encountering a dialogue about the product that’s happening in a way that’s incorporated with how they’re already living their lives, rather than trying to catch their attention with an ad,” she said.

But one can’t always wait and hope for attention. Murthy said Partiful’s three-person marketing team monitors trends to decide where it’s worth jumping in, not just on social media but within the platform itself. A few weeks ago, when the story of Punch the monkey started going viral, the team created Punch cover photos that users could add to events. And when a Heated Rivalry lookalike contest began gaining traction on the platform last month, Murthy said her team quickly caught on and provided equipment and logistical support to the hosts while promoting the event on its channels.

Beyond lookalike contests, Murthy said her team has also been eyeing the rise of singles events and clubs for everything from books to birdwatching.

“We don’t have a very big marketing budget at all, and so we have to be selective, we have to be tasteful,” she said. “We spend most of our time choosing the right aspects of the product and the culture that we should be speaking to.”

The Partiful team also occasionally flexes its curation muscles. One of the platform’s features is its Discover feed for public events, which is hand-curated by one of the brand’s team members. On Substack, Partiful puts out a newsletter called “The Guest List” where an in-house writer, as well as guest writers like creator Daniela Meyler or fellow Substacker Evie Goodman, share insights on party culture.

“Our goal with something like that is quality over quantity,” Murthy said. “We’re not trying to spam a bunch of posts. We’re trying to craft something that is unique and memorable and use it as a way of contributing to a broader conversation that’s already happening.”

The more, the merrier?

In the last few years, Murthy said, Partiful has started experimenting more with paid marketing tactics, like amplifying UGC on TikTok to build product awareness and partnering with creators like comedian Lukas Battle and “Recess Therapy” host Julian Shapiro-Barnum. The brand has tested ads “here and there,” and could do more official campaigns in the future once it figures out a compelling storytelling strategy, Murthy said.

In the meantime, the platform has collaborated more with brands, creating custom event themes and providing opportunities to be featured on its Discover feed. A November early screening event of the movie The Housemaid with Lionsgate promoted on the platform had “incredible attendance,” Murthy said, noting that collaborations with other brands are currently in the works. For now, the platform is committed to remaining ad-free, but it’s eyeing the possibility of paid features.

When it comes to marketing strategies for the year, Murthy said there isn’t a set plan other than remaining reactive—which is a term that sometimes gets a bad reputation in marketing—but to her, it’s exactly what the brand needs to be.

“Our job is to amplify cultural moments,” Murthy said, “not create them.”