How Affiliate Marketing Has Revolutionized Creator Houses and Trips

The Evolution of Brand-Sponsored Creator Houses and Trips

For decades, media companies have paid to send writers on trips, giving them opportunities to have experiences worth sharing about.

As social media took over the internet, users started sharing their experiences with beauty products, games, restaurants, airlines, and more. Brands quickly recognized that social media created a new kind of word-of-mouth influencer marketing: one that could be tracked, with proven ROI.

Brands started collaborating with influencers, sending them products to review to get the message out. Because social users trust recommendations from people they follow more than promoted ads from brands they don’t know, affiliate marketing led to better return on ad spend — and brands enjoyed droves of new customers.

Today, brands have taken sponsored content opportunities a step further: they now curate social-media worthy physical spaces where they can gather influencers to enjoy amenities, adventures, and products — while documenting everything all along the way. From brand trips to digital content houses, brands are finding new ways to integrate and help creators make brand-ready (scroll-stopping) content, and it's paying off.

Exploring examples of successful brand-sponsored content houses and influencer trips

Content houses

Also called creator houses, content houses are visually stunning spaces that host many influencers at once, who run brand partnerships and create content that reaches their audiences.

Revolve House: One of the first content houses

Though creator houses boomed in the pandemic as a way for influencers to more easily collaborate, they’ve been around for nearly a decade in some form. Back in July 2016, Revolve hosted influencers at a house in the Hamptons every weekend for a month, throwing parties sharing featured products and creating the perfect environment for brand-ready content.

Hype House

One of the most well-known TikTok houses today is Hype House (and it’s currently for sale — any brands looking for a new influencer space?). Hype House is a 12,000 square foot mansion in the Hollywood Hills where 20 TikTok influencers create videos and run brand campaigns. Mia Hayward, a member of the Hype House, has over 4 million followers. She often shares unsponsored content, but weaves in partnerships like this video of a Bose speaker as the perfect poolside accessory with 8.3 million views and nearly 200K likes.

Fenty Beauty House

Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty gathered a house full of creators to help spread brand awareness for Fenty Beauty products. Rihanna chose five beauty and makeup artist creators to live in the Fenty Beauty House in Los Angeles decked out with beauty stations, picture-perfect lighting, and tons of backdrops for TikTok videos. The hashtag #FentyBeautyHouse has over 125M views on TikTokll=https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fentybeautyhouse from both the Fenty Beauty brand account and all the influencers who lived in or came to the house to film tutorials.

Brand trips

Compared to creator houses, brand trips are a more accessible marketing strategy. Brands provide short, all-expenses-paid trips to select influencers who partner with the brand and create content featuring their products. They get to associate their brand with luxury, adventure, and vacations, and the creators feel valued, pampered, and excited to share.

Influencer trips, when done well, are win-win-win: hotels get publicity from the reach of the influencers, creators experience an incredible trip that encourages engaging content creation, and brands reach new audiences and customers.

Here are a few examples of recent successful brand trips:

Dolce Vita

In early 2023, shoe company Dolce Vita sent a group of influencers to Round Hill Resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica. They each documented their time in the resort, showing off Dolce Vita’s shoes and the amenities and natural beauty of Montego Bay.

Sarah Wolfe, an influencer with nearly 250K followers, shared multiple stories a day throughout the trip, and posted a feed post that generated 18K likes. Audrey Trullinger, an influencer with 120K followers, garnered over 75K likes across seven feed posts showing her trip and looks.

PatBO

In April 2023, PatBO a luxury clothing brand, took a group of influencers on a three-night trip to the Baha Mar Resorts in the Bahamas.

Vale Genta was one of them, an influencer with 1.4 million Instagram followers and over 870K on TikTok. Vale created a wide range of posts documenting the experience. She made Get Ready With Me videos on TikTok, created video-based feed posts showing off the brand’s clothes, and posted a collection of photos of PatBO clothes on stunning Bahamian backgrounds.

How affiliate marketing is changing the content creator house game

Affiliate marketing lets influencers receive a cut of sales made through their promotional work, and when the power is in the hands of the influencer, they’re more apt to post engaging content. Affiliate marketing platforms can give influencers exclusive discounts for their followers, further encouraging loyalty to the influencer themselves — and to the brands they partner with.

By easily being able to track the impact of every post and every campaign, the brand and the creator get to enjoy clear ROI and a boost to their brand. Take the ShopMy Festival House at Coachella.

Especially when creating content for multiple brands during a trip or at a content house, affiliate links help both creators and brands keep their metrics straight, become more data-driven, and more effectively reach their followers with engaging content — whether they’re aiming for relatable, aspirational, or anything in between.

Plus, creators love seeing the impact of their work. This transparency and communication lead to happier creators that keep working with your brand.

The changing influencer marketing landscape

Influencer trends change quickly. What was dazzling and effective one quarter could fall flat — or worse, elicit cringe — next quarter.

By using an influencer marketing platform like ShopMy and making every influencer marketing decision data-driven through modern affiliate tracking, brands can learn from wins, understand who their strongest creator affiliates are, and change course on misses. Advanced ROI tracking data helps brands generate more new business through their influencer and affiliate marketing efforts.

Keep up with brand influencer trends like creator houses and see how affiliate marketing drives sustainable revenue

Creator houses and influencer trips can be massively effective, with reach and ROI that matches or surpasses paid and organic content. Learn more about how ShopMy helps brands launch and track their influencer marketing efforts.