After “Love Island USA” became a cultural phenomenon last summer, the Peacock reality show’s built-in fan base gave the streamer the perfect venue to put their strategic partnerships into full gear, collaborating with brands from Megan Thee Stallion’s swimwear line to Duolingo.
While “Love Island USA” gained traction throughout last year’s buzzy Season 6 — leading to collaborations with Coffeemate and Pizza Hut by the show’s reunion — Season 7 started off with strong viewership, ranking as the No. 2 most-watched streaming original program and No. 1 most-watched streaming reality series for the second consecutive week during the week of June 9, according to preliminary figures from Nielsen.
The show, which airs every day except Wednesdays on Peacock, has bolstered its partnerships this season to a level that more closely resembles drama series like “Bridgerton” or “Squid Game.” Those partners range from Spotify — whose “Love Island USA” playlist has garnered over 100,000 saves — to Instacart, marking the highest interest Peacock has received with over 14 sponsors selling out integrated in-show partnerships, according to the streamer.
“Love Island USA” Season 7 partnerships have led to a 137% increase in fans’ likelihood to have talked about products featured on the show, and a 66% increase in fans’ likelihood to have purchased products from brands seen on the show, per Peacock data.
“Fans are coming to watch this show every day, and they’re really building community and connecting in real time,” Peacock’s VP of enterprise and marketing partnerships Lindsay Vogelman told TheWrap. “We’re trying to drive the fandom, give the fans something that they naturally would want, and go beyond what money could buy, almost, in this special way.”
The most memorable collaboration of the season by far was with Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hot Girl Summer” swimwear line, which saw the rapper appear on Episode 15 to chat with the female islanders and introduce her new bathing suits before hosting a twerking competition and introducing two new bombshells to the villa.
Vogelman and her team were looking for a swimwear partner, and with the rapper already being a fan of the show and gearing up to launch her new line, it was a “serendipitous” partnership, the exec said. The swimwear was made available on Peacock’s online “Love Island USA” shop, and an on-screen QR code leading to the shop saw a 25% increase in scan rate compared to the season’s average scan rate for other products featured so far this season.
“We were able to extend this beyond just a product integration,” Vogelman said. “Those are great, but how do we make this just truly about the fans and giving them something they want?”
Megan Thee Stallion wasn’t the only “Love Island USA” partner to enter the Fiji villa. Duolingo mascot, Duo the Owl, also made a grand entrance earlier this season for a “Meet the Islander” introduction video alongside a range of custom content.
After collaborating with Duolingo in 2023 for an April Fools prank surrounding a language difference-based dating show ad, Vogelman said a partnership for Season 7 seemed fitting and pointed to increased social traction for the collaboration, which has scored 4.7 million views on Instagram as of this writing.
For Vogelman, the most attractive partnerships for “Love Island USA” are those with “fun” and “playful” brand identities like Duolingo, Instacart and Spotify, which can engage with the show’s younger audience — the majority of the show’s viewers are under 30 — while crafting a seamless shopping experience, like heading to Instacart to get groceries delivered as fans watch, or jumping to Spotify to find the tunes used in the latest episode. Other partners this season include CeraVe, Coffeemate, Cuervo, Hellmann’s, Liquid I.V., Maybelline New York, Motorola, Pepsi Zero Sugar Wild Cherry, TheraBreath, Universal Pictures and Blumhouse’s “M3GAN 2.0” and Wells Fargo.
Peacock also brought back Season 6 winners Serena Page and Kordell Beckham for a CeraVe ad, which works hand-in-hand to promote spinoff series “Love Island: Beyond the Villa,” which will follow Season 6 islanders as they head to Los Angeles when it launches on July 13.
Due to the natural conversation surrounding “Love Island USA’s” constant twists and turns, Vogelman said the show lends itself more to brand partnerships than some other NBCUniversal properties, pointing to popular reality competition series “The Traitors” as another buzzy series that works well for such tie-ins.
“This is such coveted content, and we’re very protective of it because we want to really maintain the authenticity that we’ve created,” Vogelman said, adding that the goal is to “build on the natural, authentic relationships with these brands in order to just give the fans more of what they want.”
“Love Island USA” releases new episodes every day except Wednesdays on Peacock. The Season 7 finale is set for July 13.
