XP Op-Ed

When Did the Experience Become the Bag?

I don't know what happened at Coachella this year, but I know all the best swag. Scroll through the recap content and there's not a ton on the headliners. You won't find the surprise guest, the crowd moment or the set that made someone cry. You'll find the tote. The branded canteen. The influencer cataloging the line she stood in at 10am for exclusive merch so she'd have something to show for it. And it's not just the desert. Sephoria. Ulta World. March Madness. Dreamforce. Cannes Lions. The haul video has become the only recap that gets made, shared or noticed — across completely different event types, audiences and budgets. Same format every time: here's everything I got, evaluated item by item, with approximately zero mention of anything that actually happened there. That's not an audience problem. That's a flywheel we built. HERE'S HOW IT HAPPENED Brands needed to justify experience budgets. Social shares were a clean, defensible KPI — easy to screenshot, easy to put in a deck, easy to point at when someone asks what the experience did. So brands pushed for better swag to increase reach. Audiences responded. Content performed. The brief next year asked for something...