Startups Are Spending Six Figures to Show Up on College Campuses. How They’re Winning Over Coeds

The most in-demand marketing channel for brands? The quad.

BY ALI DONALDSON, STAFF REPORTER @ALICDONALDSON

Illustration: Inc.; Photos: Adobe Stock

Companies have pinpointed a new go-to growth marketing platform: college campuses. Corporate budgets, once reserved for paid advertisements on social media, are being redirected toward spending on food trucks, ice cream pushcarts, local pizza joint takeovers, free swag, celebrity bar nights, campus ambassador programs, and good old-fashioned parties in an all-out brand-on-brand war to win over students.

Over the past year, big-name schools in major consumer markets, such as the University of Texas at Austin, University of Miami, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California, and New York University, have been flooded with startups selling everything from consumer packaged goods and loungewear to generative AI tool subscriptions. Those efforts are resonating with the campus crowd. Some brand events have attracted thousands of students a day, founders say.

This current boom in college marketing is unprecedented, says Lauren Berger, an entrepreneur who has worked in the space since 2009. The founder of college job platform Intern Queen and its Gen Z-focused marketing agency arm, IQ Agency, has watched her Los-Angeles based business triple in size since 2022.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Berger, whose clients have included founder-led brands, such as Summer Fridays, as well as publicly traded companies, such as Ford, Disney, and L’Oreal. To keep up with the influx of inbound requests and referrals, her team has expanded to 20 full-time employees, plus about 100 more part-time workers on the ground in college towns. 

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“The amount of energy and attention that the college landscape is getting is unlike anything I’ve seen in the past 17 years,” she says. “The more brands that activate, the more other brands see it and want to do their own version.”

To see the evidence, all founders and executives need to do is scroll social media, which is plastered with examples throughout the school year. Last August, when students headed back to campus early for sorority rush, Sephora promoted its Kohl’s partnership by offering free glam sessions at pop-up beauty counters on campus. Poppi sent customized soda cans, featuring chapters’ letters and colors, to students across the country. Co-founder Allison Ellsworth even made a few deliveries in person. To launch its new loungewear line, Skims cast undergraduates as models for the campaign, flying more than a dozen college students out to Los Angeles. 

To kick off the spring semester, Summer Fridays launched a three-stop college tour, a strategy that Kendall Jenner’s tequila brand 818 has turned into an annual campaign over the past four years, deploying Jenner as guest bartender at students’ favorite dives off campus. 

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