Throughout the last few years, the Stanley Tumbler craze has gained momentous virality, taking over as an online and in-store phenomenon. In turn, it has left many of us asking the question, “how has a drinkware product taken over the consumer market space by storm?”
Here are our takeaways of the key consumer marketing strategies Stanley implemented to overtake the hydration market.
Embracing new customers & segments
As a century-old brand, Stanley had a well-established name within the male-dominated outdoor & workwear space. However, their niche positioning was preventing them from tapping into a large sum of potential buyers in the drinkware category.
Through a successful rebrand, a company once primarily geared towards men and marketed as an occasional-use product shifted into a versatile and trendy lifestyle brand for the everyday consumer. By appealing to an entirely new, untapped market of millennial and Gen Z women, the brand’s sales increased over 300% within the last few years. They’re now even expanding their line of tumblers to cater towards children and teens.
The key: Stanley’s willingness to reinvent as a brand and appeal to a new customer segment.
The power of influencer & affiliate narketing
Influencers continue to be a powerhouse marketing channel. We continue to see it outperform traditional ad tactics on many of our client programs thanks to its unique ability to combine reach, trendsetting and credibility (a key attribute that traditional marketing campaigns can’t quite replicate).
This exact strategy is what led to Stanley’s seemingly overnight stardom. The brand’s accelerated growth can be largely credited to a group of online influencers and creators who saw the product’s potential to explode within the female market space (and successfully made it do just that) by promoting it through their social media platforms as a product for women backed by women.
The Key: The power of UGC and people talking to people – in this case, women talking to women – to fuel discovery, appeal and demand.
Moving at the speed of culture to drive relevance
Another strategy Stanley has successfully utilized throughout their rebrand is leaning into cultural trends to generate heightened buzz. We saw this tactic perform particularly well through their latest limited-time Valentine’s Day drop, but they newsjack micro and macro trends almost all the time.
Spangler Candy is another example of a brand riding the cultural relevance wave. Earlier this month, the classic candy company debuted a line of limited-edition “Situationship Boxes” filled with misprinted, blurry candies that are “as hard to read as Gen-Z relationships”. This launch not only brought the 100-year-old brand into today’s mainstream media, but also cleverly addressed one of its most criticized flaws: many of their Sweetheart candy messages are often fuzzy and unreadable (much like a certain Gen-Z dating trend). Spangler ran with the idea. Unsurprisingly, the Boxes sold out in less than a day.
The Key: The ability to lean into today’s cultural trends while remaining authentic to your brand.
Tapping into like-minded partnerships
Brands have really woken up to the power of collaborations. Lilly Pulitzer has ramped up on this tactic. Disney has been doing it forever. Stanley has also employed it well, from its first-ever celebrity collab with country musician Lainey Wilson to its latest Starbucks “Winter Pink” cup exclusively sold at Target.
We’ve used partnerships effectively, and in many different ways. We’ve partnered on everything from product designs (which we did for Scotties Tissues years back) to co-hosted or sponsored events (which we did recently for dating app Prevue).
The Key: Finding a like-minded individual or brand with cachet and a relevant audience and considering different ways of partnering.
The Takeaway
Off the heels of Stanley’s viral success, we’re likely going to see brands try to mirror their strategy or attempt a rebrand for themselves in 2024 – and we’d recommend taking a page out of Stanley’s book (or a sip from their tumbler) from a consumer marketing perspective this year.
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