“Start with relationships”: the thinking behind Space NK’s viral Summer Society trip

Space NK’s Summer Society trip to Miami generated the kind of online engagement most brands crave: rolling TikTok commentary, national tabloid coverage and viewers treating creator updates like episodes of reality television.

Over several days, audiences followed creators and celebrities including Rochelle and Marvin Humes, Olivia Attwood and Stacey Solomon as they documented the trip in real time across TikTok and Instagram.

For Jini Sanassy, Space NK’s head of PR, the reaction reflected the way the trip itself had been constructed – less like a traditional influencer event and more like a carefully constructed social dynamic.

“People tuned into it like it was a reality television series,” she told The Daily Influence. “The first thing they were doing in the morning was waking up to see who had posted what.”

Now in its second year, Summer Society functions as both a creator trip and a broader seasonal marketing vehicle designed to place customers into what Sanassy described as a “summer mindset”.

Rather than crowding the trip with overlapping sponsorships, the retailer – known in the UK for its curated mix of beauty, skincare, haircare and wellness brands – worked with selected partners across different categories, giving each its own dedicated moment within the wider experience.

“We had one makeup partner, one SPF partner, one haircare partner,” Sanassy said. “The opportunity for those brands was to get access to our guest list.”

This year, skincare brand Kopari hosted the boat day, while other partners contributed airport outfits, luggage, cameras and travel products intended to reinforce the campaign’s holiday aesthetic.

The approach also solved a challenge unique to multi-brand retailers: how to involve multiple partners without the experience becoming visually or commercially incoherent.

“The pressure is on now for 2027,” Sanassy joked, reflecting on the scale of engagement generated by this year’s campaign.

She was also cautious about other brands drawing the wrong lessons from Summer Society’s success. The trip, she said, only worked because the trust behind it had been built over years – and no format, however well-produced, can substitute for that.

“Brand trips are not always the right option,” she said. “A copy-and-paste scenario is not the right thing to do.”

Behind the trip

In Space NK’s case, the trip was the product of years of relationship building rather than a media plan assembled around available talent. It was produced alongside creative agency Studio 82, with Sanassy’s in-house team of three leading on relationships and the overall concept.

The team was working in the shadow of its own success – the first Summer Society had already gone viral after two Muslim creators shared content from a private villa Space NK had arranged for them.

“We arranged for them to have a private villa because we didn’t want them to feel like they couldn’t relax and enjoy the sunshine,” she said. “We flew halal meat in from mainland Greece for them too.”

For Sanassy, the gesture was simply what any considerate host would do for a guest.

“That is what inclusivity looks like,” she said. “It isn’t just boxes to tick.”

How creators get noticed

That same philosophy feeds into how Space NK decides which creators to work with, with Sanassy making clear that follower counts are rarely the starting point.

“It’s more about the quality of the content and the passion and authenticity,” she said.

Smaller creators are often found through repeated, organic engagement with the brand: store visits, product content or consistently tagging Space NK online.

Sanassy said she watches content herself rather than relying solely on discovery tools.

“If I’m watching someone who’s gone into our store six or seven times, I’m like, wow,” she said.

She also pointed to creator and entrepreneur Jemma Solomon as an example of what genuine community engagement looks like in practice. In one instance, Solomon sold out Space NK’s entire stock of a Charlotte Tilbury under-eye corrector –  250 units – within 24 hours of posting about it.

“I’ve never known anything like it,” Sanassy said. “That is the power of community.”

Sanassy said the brand receives a constant stream of emails asking to be added to PR lists – outreach she believes rarely stands out on its own.

“Don’t send that email,” she said. “Maybe show me the content that you’re creating.”

Beyond Earned Media Value

Nobody on the Summer Society trip was paid to attend, and Space NK attached no posting deliverables to the invitation – a decision Sanassy said was entirely intentional.

Rather than working to a fixed number of posts, the team focused on creating an experience guests would naturally want to document. Sanassy said the amount of content shared during and after the trip went far beyond what a traditional campaign brief would typically require.

The resulting attention was substantial. Creator Ashleigh Huish generated significant earned media value from Instagram story frames alone, while the trip itself attracted multiple pieces of national tabloid coverage, including several articles in both the Daily Mail and The Sun. Kopari’s boat day activation also helped bring thousands of new customers to Space NK, according to Sanassy.

Still, she argued that EMV on its own offers only a partial picture. Alongside visibility metrics, Space NK tracks sales, affiliate traffic, customer acquisition, sentiment and wider community response – including the less tangible impact of repeatedly appearing in someone’s feed over time.

“I could get the most incredible EMV figure, but if that is disconnected from the fact we’ve not sold product, the two need to sit together as a joint KPI,” she said.

For Sanassy, the industry has become too focused on optimising what is easy to measure, while undervaluing the relationship-building that often drives influence in the first place.

“There is no computer that can tell you the correct answer when it comes to who the best creators are for your brand,” she said. “Start with relationships.”