Five years after RushTok first took over TikTok, brands are spending more on sorority recruitment season than ever—and they are no longer waiting for a name-drop in an outfit-of-the-day video to get involved.

RushTok emerged in 2021, largely from the University of Alabama, as potential new members (PNMs) posted daily outfits during sorority recruitment. The phenomenon turned unknown college-aged women into overnight influencers and now generates billions of views every year. Brand presence is increasing alongside it: beverage maker Poppi has made repeat appearances during recruitment season, while Lucky Charms, Kitsch and Nike signed on for the first time this year.

For brands, rush is no longer just a way to reach college students. Marketers say it has become one of the strongest venues for building both cultural relevance and long-term brand loyalty.

"Brands have evolved from being present to having an episodic, real commercial role in what rush looks like," Christy Kelly, executive director of strategy and innovation at MMC, told Marketing Brew. "[Sorority women have] observed the brand integrations bubbling in the last couple years, and this year, we've seen these women grab it by the horns."

Brands go straight to the chapter

Today's rush sponsors often approach sorority chapters directly, during Work Week—the days of preparation before official recruitment begins. Poppi seeds products and services with active members, on the understanding that the brand will likely appear in upcoming social content.

Sophia Sesto, Poppi's VP of culture, said the company built a dedicated college team three years ago after an influx of inbound requests from sorority chapters. "We want to fill as many requests as we can," Sesto said. "General brand and excitement and engagement is really, really big, so some of the sororities that we sent and surprised talent with this year were some of our most engaged partners last year."

Poppi's rush investment has grown in both volume and scale. This year the prebiotic-soda brand will exceed last year's sampling numbers, sending more than 1 million cans to sororities plus 20,000 pieces of custom merch. It is also arranging appearances from pop culture figures including Love Island USA runners-up Carl Schmidt and Aniya Harvey, and Rob Rausch from The Traitors. Together, these efforts account for between 30% and 40% of Poppi's back-to-school marketing budget, Sesto said.

Connecting chapters with pop culture figures is central to Sesto's approach to building relationships that outlast rush week. "We want you to have the best Work Week, the best Bid Day," she said. "Just going the extra mile and actually thinking, not from the brand lens, but from the human lens of, 'How would I want to experience something like this?'"

A smaller niche for Lucky Charms

Lucky Charms took a different route. The General Mills cereal brand had not historically targeted the college demographic, said Megan Brooks, business unit director for family favorite cereals, but it was already appearing organically in some Kappa Delta chapters' themes and social content because of the sorority's shamrock motif.

This year the brand leaned in, partnering with decor company Presley Paige to build brand elements in balloon art at the University of Arkansas's Kappa Delta chapter. On Bid Day, when new members officially join, Lucky Charms ran branded activities including bracelet-making stations.

The brand had no official creator partnerships with chapter members, so the activations had to be compelling on their own. "We knew that we wanted to create elements that we thought that they would want to create organic content around," Brooks said. "These women are—it's incredible how talented they are, frankly, at pulling together content that's really engaging."

Brooks had not planned for user-generated content from passersby impressed by the decorations—an added brand-awareness bonus. "The University of Arkansas is known for, especially during Bid Day, the decor of these houses," she said. "There's people who go through the streets and show all the houses and comment on them."

The long-term loyalty play

As brand presence becomes more tied to rush season, Kelly argued marketers can build relationships with Gen Z women that last well beyond college. Last month, MMC's Weathervaine released a report, Rush Money, detailing insights from this year's recruitment cycle, including the rising economic costs of participation that brands can build associations with early.

"If done properly, the real ROI of sorority rush for brands is establishing long-term partnerships and relationships with a community that is, at this vulnerable time, ready to receive them," Kelly said. "When you meet high stakes with something useful, that's when that brand loyalty is built."

The economic case is growing. A 2022 Pew Research Center report based on Census Bureau data found the gender wage gap narrowing among younger workers nationally, and in cities like New York, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles, women under 30 earned the same as or more than men.

Kelly said relationships built now can inform how brands appeal to these women as their spending power grows and larger purchases loom. "[Rush is] one of the first professional building blocks that these young women have, so there's a lot to be learned because we start to see the steps they take to help put themselves together," she said. "As we follow these women to their first job interviews…their first home purchase, we understand that in high-stakes moments, there are elements that they care about, people they lean on, and ways that they are trying to build."

Source: Marketing Brew (https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/sorority-rush-brand-sponsorships-poppi-lucky-charms-strategy?utm_source=&utm_medium=syndication&utm_campaign=feed) / Source: wsj.com (https://www.wsj.com/style/fashion/sorority-recruitment-rush-tok-bama-rush-influencers-534c3aa7)