For Influencers, a Free Brand Trip Can Come With a Price

Scroll through TikTok for a few minutes and you’re almost guaranteed to see content from a brand trip. These highly curated getaways for influencers have become a staple of brand marketing, giving companies a way to put their products directly into the feeds of engaged audiences.

At their best, these trips can generate thousands of views and create the kind of aspirational content that traditional advertising struggles to replicate. Dairy company Kerrygold found that formula with a trip to the Irish countryside, bringing along a seemingly hand-selected group of content creators, including chef Hailee Catalano, whose connection to food gave the trip a natural fit with the brand. Catalano’s posts from the trip quickly drew comments from followers expressing envy over the experience. 

The stakes are particularly high with this form of marketing since so much of the experience is meant to be visible. Unlike a traditional brand event, where much of the experience happens behind closed doors, nearly every element of them becomes content. 

When these trips don’t strike the right balance of people or place, viewers notice. Like in the case of OpenAI’s “Summer Camp,” a Hudson Valley influencer getaway in early August. 

The trip took place at the luxury resort Wildflower Farms in Gardiner, NY, and included activities like beekeeping, farm-to-table outdoor dinners, and OpenAI product tutorials. The AI company invited tech and lifestyle influencers to enjoy and post about their weekend upstate. But the posts didn’t go to plan, immediately sparking a wave of criticism that prompted some influencers to disable comments or delete their posts altogether. The posts that remain online are flooded with critical comments, with a common theme emerging: How could a company whose technology is contributing to environmental harm choose a retreat so immersed in nature as the setting for its brand? And how could these influencers participate in it?

It can be argued that any press is good press, so as OpenAI remains in the news weeks after the trip, it’s still getting attention for the company. The company walks away largely untouched, while the influencers who used their own judgment to decide whether to participate are facing a different reality.

Commenters on influencer Grace McCarrick’s still-active posts write that her participation was “tone deaf.”  The commentary fits into a larger cultural criticism of AI, especially voiced by Gen Z. McCarrick took to LinkedIn saying “I genuinely had no idea that people were this anti-AI.” Other attendees from the trip still have their comment sections disabled, likely in response to the criticism.

When a brand trip goes wrong, influencers are often the ones left to absorb the shock. The brand can move on from a poorly planned itinerary, but creators have to return to their audiences and explain what happened. Their credibility is part of what brands are paying for in the first place, which means a trip that misses the mark can put an influencer’s reputation at risk. 

For creators, one lesson from this trip is that accepting the invite also means accepting some of the risk. A free trip may come with a price that isn’t visible until the content goes live.

Erin Behrens is an associate editor at From Day One. 

(Photo by Andrii Iemelyanenko/iStock)