Strategy
How plusOne Turned a Birkin Giveaway Into a Brand Statement
PlusOne, a sexual wellness brand distributed at Walmart, Target, and Amazon, launched its newest Instagram campaign around a Hermès Birkin bag. The brand chose the object for what Birkins and sexual pleasure share in their culture: both are things women are often made to feel are beyond them.
The idea originated from a member of the creative team at Farrynheight, the New York-based influencer and social agency that has managed plusOne’s parent company, Beacon Wellness Brands, for nearly three years. Tatum Pederson, Farrynheight’s Vice President of Influencer and Social, frames the campaign around a proposition the brand had been building toward. “We felt that too often women are made to feel that their own happiness, their confidence, their personal pleasure is also unattainable or shouldn’t be focused on,” she says.
The campaign launched May 11, 2026, structured as a follower-gated giveaway: plusOne would draw the winner only after its Instagram account crossed 50,000 followers. Eight weeks later, the account had added over 20,500 followers and grown by more than 143%, according to the company. Makenna Conroy, Associate Marketing Manager at Beacon Wellness Brands, says the number that mattered most came after the winner was drawn. “A lot of people followed for the giveaway, but then they stayed for the content that was rooted in women’s wellness,” she says.
How Farrynheight and the Beacon Wellness team structured the campaign, from the threshold design to the creator selection to the two-month content strategy that ran alongside the giveaway, reveals the operational decisions behind a social campaign built to do more than produce a follower spike.
The Luxury Object as Brand Argument
Sexual wellness is a category “that’s been whispered about,” according to Makenna. PlusOne’s approach was the inverse. “The giveaway was also really rooted in audacity,” she says. “We really wanted to make a statement.”
Tatum frames the Birkin as an argumentative choice. The brand’s presence at Walmart and Target, where plusOne products are priced for accessibility, establishes a baseline. A Birkin giveaway argues that women’s confidence and pleasure deserve the same aspirational register that luxury brands typically occupy. “We felt like, what better opportunity to make a Birkin feel attainable and accessible to our audiences,” she says.
Makenna puts the logic plainly: “You can have the career, you can have the personal life that you want, and you can have a Birkin.”
The team did hear internal questions about why an accessible brand was giving away something associated with exclusivity. “We definitely got some questions as to why an accessible brand is giving away a Birkin. But that was exactly why,” Makenna says. Once live, skepticism dissolved. “No one really questioned it once it was live,” Tatum notes.
The 50,000 Threshold Was Designed Around Fatigue
The follower target was calibrated to a specific challenge: keeping an audience engaged long enough to cross the threshold without losing momentum. “We wanted to put a goal in front of us that felt aggressive yet attainable,” Tatum says. The team went back and forth on the number before committing to 50,000.
Tatum was direct about the fatigue risk. The team did not want a goal that would take six months to reach, because drop-off and disengagement accelerate the longer a giveaway window stays open. The solution was a threshold high enough to require collective effort, but attainable enough for the campaign to close in weeks rather than months.
The mechanic produced a community dynamic the team had anticipated but says was still striking to observe. As plusOne neared successive milestones, existing followers began actively recruiting on the brand’s behalf. “The coolest part of this campaign was that our community was really cheering us on,” Tatum says. “Existing people who are already fans of our brands, but also new people who found us through this giveaway.”
Both Tatum and Makenna say they had prepared for a longer window. The eight-week close came as a positive surprise.
Two Creators, Two Audiences
The campaign anchored on Ashley Dawkins, a creator with an existing relationship with the plusOne brand. Makenna had cultivated that relationship directly.
“We had a creator who we knew our community trusted and already had a great relationship with our team, who can move quickly on this,” Tatum says.
The direction for Dawkins’ content preserved her natural voice, direct and community-facing, rather than layering brand scripting over it. “I think it’s really important when working with influencers that they show up in their most authentic way,” Makenna says.
A second creator, Sue Bell, was added approximately halfway through the campaign. Bell, a Palm Beach-based creator who owns multiple Birkins and reaches more than 700,000 followers, brought an audience that skewed toward luxury.
The decision to bring Bell in was adaptive, not planned from the outset. PlusOne was already active in the Palm Beach area for events tied to Women’s Wear Daily, and Bell’s audience profile complemented Dawkins’ following rather than overlapping with it. “Sue Bell and Ashley Dawkins have very different audiences,” Makenna says. “Being able to reach both sides of that allowed us to get more eyeballs on the campaign and on our socials.”
Tatum notes that Bell’s activation, layered on top of paid amplification running against the brand’s own content, added incremental growth in the campaign’s second half without disrupting the momentum that had built from the start.
Saves and Shares as the Signal
The team tracked sentiment, engagement, impressions, reach, and follower growth throughout the eight weeks. Among those signals, Makenna identifies one as particularly diagnostic. “Saves and shares are driving algorithmic favorability,” she says. “Really paying attention to what was garnering the most saves and shares was an integral piece to our testing and learning situation.”
The brand content strategy ran for two months alongside the influencer posts. Farrynheight produced weekly content connecting the Birkin to current trends, calibrated to read as sophisticated and elevated in tone while remaining responsive to what the community was saying in comments and DMs. Makenna describes the approach as a continuous cycle of testing and adjustment rather than a fixed plan.
The investment included maintaining the Birkin in usable condition across an extended content run. “Babysitting a Birkin is no easy lift,” Tatum says. “The team was incredibly precious on ensuring the beauty of the Birkin never got lost.” The brand recovered its investment in the bag, according to Makenna, though she does not provide specifics beyond confirming the recovery. As of writing, the account was approaching 52,000 followers, with growth continuing after the winner announcement.
A Repeatable Model with Limits
plusOne is already building a follow-on campaign. Tatum confirmed the brand is in the process of launching another follower-gated activation tied to its recent distribution expansion into Ulta. “Expect bigger, bolder,” she says.
Whether the next campaign involves another Birkin is unresolved. What both executives say is that the mechanic continues. “This actual tactic and content strategy will continue on for the brand,” Tatum says.
For brands considering the format, Tatum maintains it remains a “novelty,” with execution risks that can erode the trust the mechanic depends on. “There has to be a lot of really strong brain power around the plans,” she says. “You start to lose trust with followers if it’s not done well in a very tasteful way.”
Makenna frames the more fundamental prerequisite: the prize has to be doing argumentative work, not simply attracting attention. “Your audience can smell it from a mile away if it’s authentic or not,” she says.
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