As part of Malibu’s new campaign, the rum brand has been engaging their target audience of young women aged 22 – 30 with an experiential ‘Malibutique’.

The  beauty boutique installation is currently touring major cities in the UK, bringing the TA together around beauty, fashion and socialising. I went down to West London’s Westfield shopping centre on May Day Bank Holiday weekend to check it out – a location and date when it was guaranteed a high footfall.

I was welcomed into a large ’boutique’ space with music playing and different areas for various types of free beauty treatments, including manicures, hair styling and fake tanning.

What was particularly interesting was that Malibu had several partnership with a range of top brands which were perfect for Malibu’s target audience – the manicures were by Nails Inc, hair by GHD, fashion styling by Lipsy and tanning by Fake Bake. They also had a Malibu summer style guide in association with Heat magazine.

I was given a token on arrival which allowed me to pick one of three Malibu cocktails. For each, there was a corresponding Nail Inc nail varnish of the same colour, nicely reinforcing the brand partnership. The special edition Malibu nail varnishes are also on offer at participating bars.

A perspective from The Lounge…

The Malibutique was nicely executed and was great at drawing interest from the passing crowds. What made the activity really stand out from a marketing perspective was the spot-on brand partnerships: whilst number of brand partners was unusually high, the context of a beauty boutique tied them all together seamlessly and with relevance.

The Malibutique strengthened the profile of each in a mutually beneficial way, creating positive associations and new fans by sharing brand advocates within the same demographic. When done in the right way, the multiple-partnership approach offers each brand a wider reach than it can achieve standing alone.

- Helen