Fly me to Dubai! I’ll buy your foundation

Graphic by Isabelle Hauf-Pisoni.

Scrolling through TikTok one afternoon, I paused on a video from influencer Alix Earle. “Oh, she’s going on a Jeep excursion in Dubai. That’s pretty cool, but a little random,” I remember thinking. Then I saw Xandra Pohl post a get ready with me video in the same hotel and also Meredith Duxbury, too. After a few more scrolls, I finally pieced together that the makeup gurus were on an influencer brand trip, sponsored by Tarte. For the small price of promoting Tarte’s products (well, for the most part considering the girls used other brands in their get ready with me videos), the girls set off to the UAE to ride camels and lounge around by the pool.

Less than two weeks later, Alix and Xandra started posting from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on a getaway courtesy of Glow Recipe skincare. 

This isn’t anything new. Brands have been sending influencers on brand trips for a while now. In the early 2000s, companies sent magazine editors on trips to write about products. By 2010, it was fashion bloggers and YouTubers. 

Remember the Dote Girls? 

In 2019, Dote was everything for impressionable teenagers scrolling YouTube for fashion and lifestyle advice. Dote used to be an online shopping app, and the brand frequently sent YouTube influencers on trips to promote them. The group included popular names like Emma Chamberlain, Summer Mckeen and Ellie Thumann.

Dote sent the influencers to Fiji, and the girls were quick to post full recaps of their entire day on their channels, always promoting Dote between bikini fit checks and quirky morning bed head. 

The brand even took some girls to Coachella, aptly calling the trip, “Dotechella.” At the time, I watched my favorite YouTubers for their relatability and humor, but I was also enamored by their privilege and concisely curated output of insanely unrealistic trip montages.

Yet Dote’s trips aren’t remembered for promoting the app’s content and generating buzz about the brand. These influencer vacations are remembered because of Dote’s racist treatment of some of the girls.

Watching the initial videos, it seemed like every girl was showered with gifts and publicity thanks to Dote’s amenities. But, later, some YouTubers came out with videos detailing problematic behavior and feelings of exclusion fostered by the experience. 

Kianna Naomi, a 19-year-old YouTuber, released a video after attending Dote’s Fiji trip. She explained how she felt like an outsider as photographers avoided taking pictures of her and other Black influencers on the trip. When she voiced her concerns, the event organizers planned a separate photoshoot for her and her friends. The pictures, though, were never used, and Dote continued to blast  photos of the white girls on the trip all over their social media.

On the Coachella trip, YouTuber Daniella Perkins made her own video, and viewers quickly realized that Dote assigned all of the white girls to large beds on one side of the house while the non-white girls slept on the other side on pull-out beds and tiny couches. Vereena Sayed, another influencer, added that a similar thing happened when taking photos. The girls were clearly and intentionally separated into groups, revealing Dote’s intention of only amplifying one very specific experience of the trip. 

One by one, Dote Girls began to distance themselves from the brand and announce that they would no longer be working with them. The app faded to obscurity and soon shut down.

Now, brand trips take on a different flavor, since TikTok has taken over as the primary destination for influencer content. 3-minute GRWM makeup videos and fit checks characterize a majority of Tarte’s Dubai trip. 

Ultimately, brand trips succeed in achieving their marketing goals by stirring conversation. I can’t imagine there’s anyone who didn’t turn a head after seeing Alix post a thirst trap with a camel. The trips, so glamorous and extravagant in scope, go viral as viewers seek to understand the feasibility of such elaborate efforts. However, the response isn’t always positive for the brand.

Users expressed exasperation with the trip, annoyed that rich companies send rich people on rich trips just to promote some products. To that end, a lot of TikTokers pointed out that all of the content turned them away from the brand rather than eager to add products to their cart.

These trips and their troubled history don’t really need to have results, though. Whether or not the endeavor really increased any sales, these trips still become so buzzworthy. I wouldn’t even be writing this article if not for my fascination with the mechanisms that make them work. The hashtag #TrippinWithTarte has over 140 million views. Alix Earle may have risen to fame as a college student, but she continues to climb because of the increased glamor of her life, something that I don’t think her 4.4 million followers would be willing to give up. At the end of the day, we are all enamored by what’s unattainable in our own lives, like going on a sponsored brand trip across the world to Dubai.