Bloom, Pacsun and more chase Coachella crowds on the way to the show with roadside activations

“You can see the pop-up from the highway, and it grounds people with a landmark that’s easy to find,” she said. “Since we’re not in the festival, this is a way for the brand to still be present.”

Maruchan is one of dozens of brands popping up in the vicinity of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. While the event itself is a hub for major brand sponsorships and brand activations from the likes of Heineken and Starbucks, brands are increasingly doing hotel takeovers, hosting house parties or coming up with experiential moments in the desert to capture some of the foot traffic and attention, without having to pay to actually be on the festival grounds.

Women’s apparel brand Windsor is doing a takeover at Palm Springs’ luxe Avalon Hotel, where influencers who work with the brand will be treated to shuttle rides and gifting suites, plus a pool party on Saturday. Pacsun, which has a bold black billboard along the freeway, has a roadside stand on Highway 111 heading out to the festival grounds with exclusive merch and flash tattoos, and is also hosting a house party for the first time. Revolve is hosting its own invite-only festival for the ninth year in a row.

Off-site activations are becoming a key way brands are showing up at big cultural events; earlier this year, companies like Béis, While on Earth and Away held pop-ups across San Francisco during the Super Bowl at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

Maruchan’s MaruMart is located at Cabazon Outlets, a premium outlet mall along Interstate 10 on the way from Los Angeles. The activation includes a DIY ramen bowl station, plus limited-edition merch and to-go snack items. It’s advertised with billboards around the exit, one of which reads, “Festival finances ain’t matching?” The other says, “Still here when the festival payment plan kicks in.”

“We wanted to bring that message of ‘we’re here for you’ to life this year,” Stokes said, “It really speaks to who we are as a brand: affordable and dependable.”

Stokes said it’s the company’s biggest activation to date after a smaller trial at L.A. ComicCon. But it invested in a shipping container to build the MaruMart and an Airstream trailer to cook the ramen, so the goal is to use these new assets to show up at future events. 

“We’re dipping our toes into activations in moments that make sense for us,” she said. “If there’s positive sentiment, we’ll think about how to bring this to other festivals.”

Leaning in on novelty

One of Maruchan’s biggest challenges in setting up the activation was determining which products or flavors to promote to generate the most buzz. It’s using MaruMart to highlight its latest launch, a Flamin’ Hot chicken flavor, that people can sample. It also has special recipes that will be cooked on site, limited-edition merch, and products for sale for people to take to their Airbnbs or campsites — in hopes that they’ll post about the experience.

“The ultimate success metric is delivering delicious food and getting that feedback in person,” Stokes said. “But beyond that, it’s the social conversation.”

Meanwhile, Irv’s Burgers, which has three locations in California and Los Angeles, will be vending at the festival.

But its signature item this year is the LA to L.A. Combo, created in conjunction with singer and Coachella performer Addison Rae, in a nod to her Louisiana-to-Los Angeles journey. It features her “dream burger,” with white American cheese, Cajun-blackened pineapple, jalapeños and Irv’s signature sauce, plus a side of waffle fries covered in Slap Ya Mama Cajun seasoning.  

CEO Lawrence Longo said he first met Rae when he bought the chain several years ago; she became a fan of the brand, and he hoped to one day do a collaboration. So when she was announced as a Coachella performer in September, he said it was a natural fit.

“At first, I was like, pineapple and pickled jalapeños? I don’t know if people are gonna love that. And she was right,” Longo said. “It’s like an umami of flavors in your mouth.”

A collectible cup featuring Rae’s face on a dollar bill is already driving some sales for Irv’s Burgers restaurants, with 1,000 of the cups being sold online within an hour of being added to the site. Longo said many purchasers were in the Palm Springs area, intending to bring cups to the festival.

Longo also owns Prince Street Pizza, which frequently hosts collabs with celebrities and athletes, like hockey player Jack Eichel. Past Irv’s collabs include Benny Blanco and SpongeBob. Longo said cultural collabs are strong when the talent actually likes the product and has buy-in.

“You get lost in the crowd if you’re not doing something intentional,” he said.

Dominic Chavez, creative and design director at Pacsun, said the biggest challenge with activations is ensuring all the details come together in real time in a way that feels cohesive and culturally relevant. For its activation, Chavez said the team also had to set clear priorities for where they wanted to have an impact and where to concentrate their budget.

“Rather than spreading resources too thin, investment is concentrated into a few high-impact moments: the scale and visibility of the billboard, the content and community driven by the influencer house, and the accessibility of the roadside stand,” he said.

Turning activations into content

Another off-site takeover that’s already generating buzz is Bloom Nutrition’s 7-11 takeover at a post near the Palm Springs Airport. For the pop-up, Bloom wrapped the gas station and convenience store in pink, plus brought in DJs, samples, gifting, an airbrush merch station and giveaways. CEO Greg LaVecchia said the store is poised to be “the ultimate way to break up a road trip” when you’re getting restless in the car. The drive from Los Angeles to the Empire Polo Club grounds in Indio can take roughly three hours in non-peak hours, let alone with extra festival traffic.

Beyond riding the cultural moment that is Coachella, the takeover is a way to plug the nationwide launch of Bloom’s energy drinks at 7-Eleven stores, which is rolling out this year. The company will capture content at the takeover to feed its own social channels to help spread the word about its availability.

This is the second of five or six large-scale activations Bloom will host this year, LaVecchia said, with activations becoming a major way for the company to engage in brand marketing. “If it makes sense on a digital activation level as well as an in-real-life activation level, then it’s pretty easy for me to give the stamp of approval,” he said.

The biggest challenge, though, is making sure people show up.

For Coachella, Bloom scheduled the takeover for Thursday and Friday, knowing it was most likely to be seen by people as they travel into town. The 7-11 is located in an area with strip malls and other places like Walmart that people may stop at on their way to the festival.

But success will be measured less by foot traffic and financial ROI than overall awareness, social chatter and virality generated by the pop-up.

“We’re not, like, reverse engineering the whole program for how many impressions we’re going to get at what cost,” LaVecchia said. “There are just tentpole moments throughout the year that we want to make sure Bloom is associated with, and that just goes back to building a brand versus selling a product.”