![]() ![]() In Margaritaville, it says, "passports are not required. The brand distills the lifestyle in this ubiquitous promo paragraph. It's the state of mind that the rum punch in your hollowed-out pineapple is always half full. Margaritaville, as any of these 21-year-olds will gladly explain to you, isn't just Jimmy Buffett's 1977 song about the shaker of salt. You'll be seeing a version of the winning design on sweatpants and hoodies at an airport gift shop near you very, very soon. That night, after a steak dinner at a restaurant with the buttoned-up name JWB (James William Buffett, obviously), the students are dismissed into the central Florida night with a homework assignment to come up with a logo for the group. We're technically following an impeccably prescribed itinerary, but at least everyone is doing it in floral print. They're ready to take the morning's challenge-a scavenger hunt for symbolic Buffett lyrics around the hotel-very, very seriously. In my first hint that the next generation will save us all, the students are all shiny and dressed for success in Florida formalwear of Hawaiian shirts under blazers and bright teal dresses. We're at a Margaritaville-themed resort I show up to our first group event in a bathing suit and shorts like the professional journalist I am. As reward for their two semesters of free promotion, a bunch of college kids who love Jimmy Buffett enough to take on an unpaid part-time job promoting his brand were invited to spend the weekend helping plot out Instagram stories, pose for photos, shop for "Five O'Clock Somewhere" shirts, design branded sweatpants, and lounge poolside at the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort. The weekend is a combination focus group, job interview, and vacation for the chosen eight out of 150 junior brand reps. Those are the kind of minute details that Margaritaville Holdings LLC has completely planned for. For the record, the big flip-flop in the hotel lobby that watches over us all may or may not be a Jeff Koons, but it's attributed to an anonymous artist so that guests can assume for themselves that it is. I travelled to Hollywood, Florida trying to figure out what these kids apparently don't see in Carly Rae Jepsen. But somehow, a bunch of teens ended up stanning for a song that came out in 1977. I have almost a decade on these kids, and the first notes of Buffett's empire-building song "Margaritaville" send even me less to Bermuda and more to flashbacks of drunk dads at my high school pool parties. They (and I, full disclosure) got sent to Florida to talk about "Mr B" for three days straight and sleep on pillows that said "Changes in Latitude" on one side and "Changes in Attitude" on the other. She chose the tickets.īenson is one of the eight college kids attending the first annual Margaritaville College Ambassador Roundtable, a company-sponsored weekend retreat for Buffett's most loyal junior fans. For her birthday, her parents offered her either a Sweet 16 party or Buffett tickets. Benson wasn't allowed to attend concerts until she turned 16. "Beyoncé is to my friends as Jimmy Buffett is to me," Brooke Benson, a just-graduated college student, tells me in the shadow of a ten-foot-flip flop. ![]()
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