How influencers fiercely strategize behind the scenes a Coachella

Sam Mintesnot had checked off everything she possibly could have from a long list of to-dos in preparation for the Coachella music festival. She crafted the best outfits, got her hair and nails done, booked a one-way ticket to Los Angeles and flew out on Tuesday with a spreadsheet full of ideas for videos she could post related to the festival.

The only problem was that just days before the Coachella kicked off on Friday, she didn’t have a ticket — at least, not yet.

Mintesnot is a content creator, and she was seeking an invitation from a brand to join them at the annual festival in Indio, California, that is sometimes called an “influencer Olympics.” She posted across her social media platforms about her ticket-less journey in hopes of landing a pass to Coachella in exchange for posting videos about the brand and experience.

“You never know what’s going to happen,” she said. “There’s so many opportunities out there.”

Coachella, rife with Instagrammable moments, is a mutually beneficial opportunity for creators and businesses alike. The social media content that comes out of the sprawling music festival screams spontaneity, but industrious planning is often buzzing behind the scenes weeks, or sometimes even months, in advance. Securing brand partnerships, lining up sponsored content opportunities, and building out a content calendar require patience, strategic thinking, and business acumen.

Content creators are often the butt of jokes online for enterprising habits like shamelessly requesting access to events or free merchandise. But for some — including Mintesnot — it works. She received an invitation to the festival from YouTube on Wednesday, just two days before the two-weekend-long event began.

Monetizing music festival attendance

Coachella, in its 25th edition this year, has been an annual mainstay of internet culture. Both weekends of the festival are sold out, but global audiences can view a livestream on YouTube to see performances from headliners Sabrina Carpenter, Justin Bieber, and Karol G, along with dozens of other artists. The video-sharing platform offers fans livestreams of seven stages simultaneously as well as creators’ videos and other Coachella-related content.

Creators capture not only performance clips but everything else about their Coachella experience, from the glamorous brand events and freebies to the more mundane bathroom lines and food options.

The festival is the largest marquee livestream music event YouTube does, said Matt McLernon, the company’s head of artist partnerships who has helmed its relationship with Coachella.

“Seeing how much the creator side has breathed this whole additional life into it — what’s on the stage, the creators, the fans, the kind of intersection of all of them, of what happens from there — it’s really truly magical,” he said. “There’s as many cameras pointed at the actual artists on stage as there are amongst the crowd.”

The monetization paths for creators vary. For fashion and beauty influencers, shopping tools that are built into platforms like TikTok and YouTube offer a way to earn commissions. This is a reliable route to a big payout for something like Coachella, where swaths of people are seeking outfit and makeup inspiration, or are just curious about the year’s trends.

Magdaline Janet, a beauty YouTuber, said YouTube Shopping has allowed her to become a full-time content creator.

“It’s huge because Coachella essentially is a beauty and fashion show along with music,” she said.

For some creators, it pays off to purchase a ticket and travel independently for the festival, even without a brand invitation. The engagement they get from Coachella-related videos — in the buildup, in real time and in retrospect — often translates to a net profit.

Sydney Morgan, a content creator known for her special effects makeup, bought her own ticket. She is staying in a rented home with her friends who are also content creators — the Airbnb was specially selected to look good in videos and she created an itinerary to accommodate the group’s respective filming plans, she said.

“Me and my friends like to joke that Coachella’s our favorite holiday,” Morgan said. The group was traveling to Indio on Wednesday to have a full day devoted to content creation before the musical sets kicked off. “We talk about it all year and we romanticize the crap out of it, and I know that our audience does the same thing, especially those that can’t be there in person.”

Audiences are curious, so creators ‘keep ’em fed’

Morgan mapped out extensive plans for a long-form video focused on her festival fashion and several short-form videos.

Like Morgan, many creators go in with a plan for content they want to film during the festival, but as entertainment news host and content creator Louis Levanti said, the key to mastering the festival is a “willingness to adapt.” Levanti is a full-time content creator but previously worked in digital video production and media, and he said he takes those skills into his content planning now.

“It’s important to tell the story from your lens as quickly but as accurately and efficiently as possible,” he said. “I do really think of it as a newsroom. I do look at every story as like, ‘How do I build this into more than just a headline?’”

Levanti is also attending Coachella this year with YouTube, but he said there’s value in using this year’s festival to build relationships with other brands for future festivals and opportunities. Some brand deals, like Levanti’s past Coachella collaborations with Coca-Cola and Absolut Vodka, can come with restrictions on what content creators can and cannot post and what other brands they can work with.

“It’s a great opportunity where there’s no constraints or stress on me to make content, which makes it easier for me to do that while also appealing to more brands,” he said.

While the brands at the festival, the fashion trends and artist lineups change with each year, the constant at Coachella is an insatiable appetite online for any and all festival-related content. And these creators are eager to let their prep work pay off to meet that demand.

“We want to feed the audience, keep ’em fed, give them good content and have fun while doing it,” Morgan said.

—Kaitlyn Huamani, AP technology writer