How Brands Are Tapping the College Content Machine

#RushTok may be done for the season, but for brands, the collegiate marketing opportunity is just beginning.

Whether it’s kitting out sorority members for much-photographed events or hosting game day parties, fashion brands — including J.Crew, Faherty, LoveShackFancy and more — are popping up on campuses across the US in order to tap the boom in college-aged content creators. By staging social media-friendly events for students who are already sharing their college experiences online, the hope is that they’ll be able to influence not just their peers, but followers far beyond their respective campuses.

But rather than just jumping on the bandwagon, brands need to have a natural reason to activate on campus. Whether it’s an extension of an existing strategy, or a way to lean further into their core demographic, fashion labels should find ways to show up for students that genuinely add to their college experience while staying aligned with their core identity.

Urban Outfitters, for example, has a history of being present on college campuses — it operates shops on 20 campuses nationwide. This fall, for the second year in a row, it hosted “UO Live” school year kick-off parties at the Universities of Tennessee, Arizona and Colorado, featuring performances from artists like Yung Gravy and DJs Sidequest and Rebecca Black. The event was designed to foster community building on campus — and create a positive association between students and the brand.

“It’s hard for Gen-Z and these college students to make friends the first year,” said Cyntia Leo, head of brand marketing at Urban Outfitters, a realisation the brand was led to via its own insights and data. “What we felt was really important was to create a space and a venue for them to gather and have a lot of fun and meet each other.”

Students also make particularly effective ambassadors: Jewellery label Gorjana, for instance, partnered with college athletes to create campaigns and social media content as part of its Gorjana Sports Club initiative. Its August catalogue, starring Lauren and Sienna Betts, sisters and basketball players for the University of California, Los Angeles and Kyra Zaengle, a freshman volleyball player at the University of Southern California, outperformed last year’s by 35 percent.

“College athletes are really the ones that probably have the most influence on college campuses,” said Iva Pawling, Gorjana’s chief marketing officer. “They have such true loyalists in their followings. If you’re following an athlete, you really want to support them.”

The benefits too, have the potential to last beyond graduation. By building relationships with students early on, brands can hopefully develop longer-term connections that will pay off over time as students graduate and have access to more disposable income. In the meantime, they can also earn a more solidified place in the TikTok zeitgeist by gifting students products or creating shareable experiences.

Creating Shareable Experiences

Brands are designing events that feel like a natural part of the college experience — but are still worth sharing online.

To appeal to students scattered throughout Boston, preppy retailer J. Crew, for instance, staged a bookstore-themed activation to celebrate the opening of its Boston flagship store. It sold Boston College-themed merchandise as part of a broader collegiate apparel offering, and enlisted Boston-area college influencers to share photos of the brand’s famous catalogues and the customisable leather bookmarks available at the pop-up.

Football season, too, is a popular backdrop. Pacsun, Hollister and Faherty are among those staging game day parties, tailgates and more for students. What those look like in practice varies brand to brand, campus to campus.

Faherty’s “Tailgate Tour,” for example, will see the brand pop up at 12 campuses throughout the autumn, including Harvard, Columbia and Yale, where co-founder Alex Faherty played football. The brand worked with Lids U, which manages college bookstores, to make the introduction to the various schools. On game day itself, it brought a mobile pop-up shop complete with giveaways, music and, most importantly, co-branded merchandise that stands out from typical bookstore pieces with vintage-inspired styles, bringing a “higher-end fashion” take to collegiate apparel that’s ripe for sharing online, said Faherty.

While the brand is partnering up with a few student influencers at each school, it’s focused on producing an exceptional experience and product that will naturally generate buzz among the thousands of attendees, including both students and alumni.

“If you can create experiences for people when they’re in these special locations, it tends to resonate more than if they’re just walking down the street with a million other places to shop,” said Faherty.

Hollister, meanwhile, leaned into one school in particular, hosting the first campus edition of its free “Feel Good Fest” concert series at the University of Texas at Austin to kick off a multi-year partnership with the university. As part of the sponsorship, the brand will take over the stadium for all home games as the official sponsor of the university’s existing “Longhorn City Limits” concert series, where it will give away Texas-branded products, host game day activations and partner with student athletes.

“The team has done an incredible job of creating real relationships with athletes,” said Carey Collins Krug, chief marketing officer of Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister’s parent company.

College Content Creators

The best activations keep students posting about the brand even after they’ve wrapped.

That starts with choosing the right creators to work with to amplify their messaging. Student athletes — essentially on-campus celebrities — make for particularly effective partners. Hollister, for instance, partnered with dozens of student athletes (NILs) to support its “Feel Good Fest” series — many of whom the brand has started to actively incorporate into broader campaigns.

As part of its Sports Club initiative, Gorjana launched an official partnership with Arizona State University (its founders’ alma mater), providing every female student athlete and spirit squad member with gift cards to shop its products and giving them free rein to create content about their visit to one of its Arizona stores. It’s part of a broader strategy of doubling down on user-generated content (UGC) in the past year, with UGC now accounting for 30 percent of its paid digital spend, compared to five percent last year.

Cherry-picking incoming students even before they arrive on campus is also becoming an increasingly popular strategy. Pacsun’s social team, for instance, scoured social media for incoming freshmen based on posts or hashtags they’d used, according to chief marketing officer Richard Cox.

Teaming up with freshmen,who are set to experience countless shareable moments, from move-in day to sorority and fraternity rush, is also a way to become an early partner to a student whose following might explode once they arrive on campus. Izzy Darnell, the younger sister of University of Alabama #RushTok phenom Kylan Darnell, grew her already-sizeable TikTok following to over 1 million during recruitment. Though she didn’t end up pledging a sorority, she’s kept up posting Alabama-branded game day outfits.

In looking for potential partners, brands should consider where their target customer is congregating. LoveShackFancy, for instance, is targeting sorority sisters, a natural fit for its frilly, floral dresses — as well as a strong influencer on campus. In November 2024, the brand hosted a contest where the winners, students at the College of Charleston, won a sorority house makeover in partnership with Pottery Barn. It was such a hit it decided to further extend its presence on campus this year with its “College Besties” ambassador programme.

While “unfortunately, we can’t afford to send 300 dresses to every sorority,” said Annie Taube, the brand’s head of marketing, they can choose an ambassador at multiple big colleges and sororities “to be our gatekeeper and help us communicate with [students]. That’s such an important audience for us.”