As vacationers flock to the Hamptons each summer, so do brands

At the Palm Tree Music Festival in Westhampton this summer, brands lined up to capture the attention of concertgoers who had shelled out at least $299 to watch artists like Calvin Harris and Kygo.

Helicopter charter company Blade flew concertgoers to the event from New York City. Tequila brand Don Julio served cocktails at the festival. Celsius was its exclusive energy drink partner.

“It was definitely different than your typical musical festival. It was affluent, it was upscale,” said Brian Rappaport, founder and CEO at out-of-home agency Quan Media Group, who attended the event. “There were a lot of brand integrations taking place there.”

The Palm Tree Music Festival is one of many ways marketers can reach those traveling to the Hamptons in the summer. As brands clamor to get in front of these visitors, they often take advantage of some of the destination’s more bespoke inventory, like wrapping ads on helicopters, flying aerial banners above beaches, and putting ads on transportation like the Hampton Jitney bus.

“Everyone seems to, once April rolls around, [ask], ‘How can we reach Montauk? How can we reach the Hamptons?’ As expected, there are limited out-of-home opportunities, so it kind of creates this creative approach for brands to hit that audience,” Rappaport said.

Flyin’ high

One way marketers are catching the eyeballs of Hamptons beachgoers? Aerial advertising—aka ads in the sky.

According to Brian Broderson, SVP of operations at out-of-home advertising company Van Wagner, it’s worked with brands including Net-A-Porter, J. Crew, and High Noon on aerial campaigns. Brands will sometimes feature things like QR codes, hashtags, and phone numbers on their aerial ads to encourage engagement, he said.

In terms of pricing, Broderson said the aerial banners themselves can cost anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000 depending on size, though a campaign’s overall price depends on how many times the ad is flown. He said flights are typically sold in four-hour increments, but didn’t go into detail regarding pricing.

Marketers are typically looking to get in front of weekend crowds: Broderson noted that most impressions are garnered Friday through Sunday. An average Hamptons aerial campaign flight garners between 900,000 to 1 million impressions, according to Van Wagner.

“It is inexpensive, relatively speaking, in terms of the massive amount of impressions that are garnered through an aerial advertising flight,” he said.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane!

Aerial advertising isn’t the only option for brands that want to see their name in the sky.

Blade offers rides between New York and the Hamptons, with the price for a single ride beginning at $1,000. Advertisers can wrap their ads around Blade’s helicopters and seaplanes, according to Jeffrey Brenner, its head of brand partnerships and activations.

He said companies that have run ads on Blade include Banana Republic and The Macallan.

Blade charges advertisers a base cost of $20,000-$25,000 per helicopter each month, according to Brenner. Some companies opt to do larger integrations with Blade; for instance, Brenner said one retailer took over a display wall at the company’s West Side lounge to promote a new collection.

“It really does depend on the advertisers’ goals and objectives, and then how many helicopters we need to accomplish that,” he said. “We have partners that will have a dinner out in the Hamptons for some influencers or partners or VIPs and they will brand the helicopter for the day just to fly people out there and back.”

On the road again

Meanwhile, on-the-ground transportation has caught other brands’ attention.

One such brand is grocery delivery service FreshDirect, which has been placing its ads on Hampton Jitneys, buses that take travelers from New York City to the Hamptons area and back.

“This summer, we’re focusing on the Jitney wrap, just knowing that this is a more premium placement where we can reach those heading to and from Manhattan, the Hamptons, and Montauk,” Amanda Temes, senior manager of media and partnership strategy at FreshDirect, said. “That’s a lot of coverage as people sit in traffic through the city and on the Long Island Expressway, where there’s not a lot of out-of-home coverage.”

According to Temes, FreshDirect has also placed ads in Long Island Rail Road cars, as well as transit hubs like Penn Station and Grand Central Station.

In the past, she said the brand had more heavily focused on experiential activations, like pop-up farm stands in the Hamptons. FreshDirect also hosted an event involving Hamptons influencers at a house in Montauk in partnership with tequila brand Casa del Sol.

This summer, however, Temes said FreshDirect is “really focusing on just meeting the customers where they are, and where they’re traveling, to remind them of our services.”