Snapple is turning an unlikely piece of New York pop culture into a live advertising experience. On Sept. 17, the beverage brand will transform the decommissioned Staten Island Ferry associated with Pete Davidson and Colin Jost into the Snapple Island Ferry, a free one-night comedy club designed to generate both in-person engagement and social content.
From Celebrity Curiosity to Brand Media
Some brand campaigns start with a media plan. Snapple’s latest activation starts with a ferry.
On Sept. 17, the beverage brand will turn the Staten Island Ferry purchased by comedians Pete Davidson and Colin Jost into a one-day comedy venue, with Davidson and Jost hosting a 60-minute show featuring emerging comedians.
The event is being produced with The Stand Group, which is also a partner in the ferry and operates The Stand Restaurant & Comedy Club.
For Snapple, however, the ferry is only the physical centerpiece. The larger campaign is built around turning an unusual cultural moment into something that can travel across social platforms.
The company plans to distribute clips and other content from the event through its social channels, extending the activation beyond the people who attend in person.
That makes the campaign an example of how experiential advertising is increasingly being designed as content infrastructure, rather than as a standalone event.
The Physical Experience Is Only Half the Campaign
The Snapple Island Ferry illustrates a familiar challenge in modern advertising: brands need experiences that work both in the real world and inside the feed.
A conventional sponsored event may generate attendance, photographs and press coverage. A social-first activation can produce substantial digital reach but lack the physical immediacy of an experience.
Snapple is attempting to connect the two.
The ferry provides the unexpected physical setting. Davidson and Jost supply celebrity recognition and entertainment value. Comedy gives the activation a repeatable content format. Social distribution then gives the brand an opportunity to reach people who were never on the boat.
That structure effectively creates multiple layers of media from one activation.
The live event becomes the source material. Short-form comedy clips become social content. Celebrity participation creates additional organic conversation. And the unusual setting gives the campaign a visual hook that can travel independently of the original event.
Why Creator and Celebrity-Led Media Is Becoming More Strategic
The campaign arrives as marketers increasingly treat creators and entertainment personalities as media channels rather than simply promotional spokespeople.
IAB projects U.S. creator advertising spend will reach $44 billion in 2026, with creator advertising increasingly operating as a full-fledged media channel. IAB has also identified measurement, standards and fragmented platforms as major challenges as creator investment scales.
Snapple’s campaign sits slightly outside traditional influencer marketing, but the underlying strategy is similar.
Davidson and Jost are not simply appearing in a conventional commercial. Their existing cultural identity is being used to shape the experience itself.
That distinction matters.
The stronger creator and celebrity campaigns increasingly begin with something audiences would find interesting even without the brand attached. The advertising value comes from making the brand a natural participant in that experience.
In Snapple’s case, the absurdity of turning a ferry into a comedy club is effectively part of the creative.
Social Video Becomes the Distribution Layer
The campaign also reflects the growing importance of social video as an advertising environment.
IAB expects U.S. digital video advertising to exceed $80 billion in 2026, with social video growing faster than CTV in its latest forecast. The organization points to creator-economy investment and AI-powered personalization as major forces behind social video’s momentum.
That makes the decision to capture and distribute clips from the ferry particularly relevant.
Rather than treating social as a promotional channel for the event, Snapple can treat the event itself as a content generator.
The strategy gives the brand several opportunities to extend the campaign: short comedy clips, behind-the-scenes footage, celebrity moments, audience reactions and the visual novelty of the ferry.
It also creates the possibility of turning attendance scarcity into digital engagement. Only a limited number of people can experience a one-night event in person, but social content can reproduce the feeling of being there for a much larger audience.
Turning FOMO Into an Advertising Mechanism
The limited-ticket structure is another important part of the campaign design.
Free tickets will be released daily at 3 p.m. ET from Sept. 3 through Sept. 8, with each winner receiving a pair. The Sept. 17 event will begin with doors opening at 7 p.m. and the comedy show at 8:30 p.m. at Pier 17.
Scarcity gives the campaign a natural participation mechanism.
People have a reason to follow Snapple’s social presence, return for ticket drops and discuss the event before it happens. Those behaviors can generate attention without relying entirely on conventional paid impressions.
The result is a campaign funnel that moves from cultural conversation to participation to live experience to social content.
For advertisers, that is increasingly attractive because one creative concept can generate multiple touchpoints across the customer journey.
The Bigger Shift: Experiences Designed for the Feed
Snapple’s ferry activation is ultimately less interesting because it involves a boat than because it demonstrates how advertising formats are converging.
Experiential marketing, celebrity partnerships, creator marketing, social video and branded entertainment are no longer neatly separated categories.
IAB’s upcoming CreatorFronts in New York is itself evidence of that shift, with the organization positioning creator-led media alongside platforms, measurement companies, marketplaces and media-distribution partners. Its September agenda even includes a session titled “TV is the New Creator Platform.”
Snapple’s campaign operates in the same direction from a different starting point.
The brand is taking a recognizable cultural story, attaching a physical experience to it, turning that experience into entertainment and then extending the resulting content into social feeds.
That is increasingly what modern brand media looks like: one idea, multiple environments and an audience that can participate rather than simply watch.
Market Landscape
Snapple’s activation reflects several broader advertising trends:
- Experiential-to-social convergence: Physical events are increasingly designed to produce digital content that extends their reach.
- Celebrity as media: Entertainment personalities can provide audience access, cultural relevance and content rather than simply appearing in advertisements.
- Creator-led advertising: Brands are moving creators closer to the center of media strategy as investment grows.
- Short-form video amplification: Live experiences can become sources of social video assets, extending campaign life beyond the event itself.
- Participation-driven marketing: Ticket drops, limited access and FOMO can turn audiences into active participants in a campaign.
The challenge for marketers is measurement. IAB’s creator-economy research highlights fragmented metrics and inconsistent measurement as obstacles to scaling creator-led media like a conventional advertising channel.
For campaigns like Snapple’s, that means the next question is not simply how many people attended or viewed a clip. Advertisers increasingly need to understand how physical participation, earned conversation, creator reach, social engagement and downstream brand outcomes connect.
Top Insights
- Snapple is turning a celebrity-owned ferry into a live comedy experience designed to generate both physical participation and scalable social content.
- Pete Davidson and Colin Jost function as more than celebrity endorsers, helping make the campaign’s unusual concept itself part of the entertainment.
- Social distribution extends the value of a one-night event, allowing Snapple to turn live performances and audience moments into reusable video assets.
- The activation reflects advertising’s convergence of experiential marketing, creator partnerships, celebrity entertainment and short-form social video.
- The campaign also highlights a growing measurement challenge as marketers connect live experiences, social engagement, creator influence and business outcomes.
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