March 9, 2016
Marie Claire editorial
Hearst women’s magazine Marie Claire is raising its belief in female empowerment through an invite-only in-flight networking event.
The Power Trip will kick off on March 21 with a JetBlue flight from New York to San Francisco, where the women will disembark and attend a pop-up conference at the W Hotel with speakers from the tech, fashion and media worlds. Upending the traditional conference is in line with the forward-thinking magazine's voice.
"The Power Trip has been nearly a year in the making," said Anne Fulenwider, editor-in-chief of Marie Claire. "One day in the back of a taxi during New York fashion week last winter, one of our junior editors told me she had a friend at JetBlue who wanted to connect with our team, and I just thought, Can we get a plane?
"The Marie Claire network is filled with successful, creative, influential women who never have enough time," she said. "For women who travel for business, the plane ride can be a kind of escape. I get many of my best ideas on planes.
"At the same time many of us have been to women's conferences and while we've had wonderful experiences, there is a lot of lost time and so much of it is spent in transit. We realized we had a huge opportunity to take advantage of that window. We have the ultimate captive audience of influential women in decision making roles, feeling relaxed and creative. What could we accomplish? The answer, we realized, was anything we wanted."
Up in the air
Sponsors for the Power Trip include Shiseido, Tacori, W Hotels, JetBlue and Dell Intel.
Invitees will not have to pay for a thing as they are whisked to the west coast for the 36-hour experience. During the flight, the attendees can take part in meditation sessions, and the passengers will be gifted Dell laptops, on which they can watch advanced screenings of television shows.
Once they land, the Power Trip participants will attend a series of talks with influential women, who will each cover how every woman has the potential to disrupt.
Entrepreneurs include Birchbox co-founder Katia Beauchamp, ClassPass founder Payal Kadakia, Tyra Banks, Drew Barrymore and Lauren Bush Lauren. Other attendees include Donna Karan International CEO Caroline Brown, A&E Networks president and CEO Nancy Dubuc and Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter.
"The next thing we realized was we need to delight, surprise and inspire these women once we got back on the ground," Ms. Fulenwider said. "We looked for people who were directing the conversation and creating something new--entrepreneurial in some way, constantly innovating, questioning the norm.
"Many of them have completely disrupted their chosen industry-- and become successful while doing it, building fulfilling lives on their own terms," she said. "These women are at the core of what Marie Claire stands for and what we hope to inspire both the attendees and our readers with what happens there."
Other brands have raised the novelty of typical events by hosting them mid-flight.
In 2013, British department store Harrods partnered with British Airways to host a fashion show mid-flight on an A380 plane.
Two hundred guests sipped Champagne as they watched models walk the aisle of the plane wearing British designers. By hosting this fashion show in an unconventional setting, Harrods benefited from word-of-mouth and social media buzz (see story).
"Anytime you do something new or unexpected people pay attention," Ms. Fulenwider said. "The sheer novelty of this event has generated an unprecedented willingness to experiment and collaborate on the part of attendees.
"We hope that everyone is able to walk away with more creative ideas, more connections across industries and a sense that they were part of something special."
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