A significant marketing expert claimed that Stanley unleashed a “perfect storm” of viral marketing with social media monolith TikTok to get consumers crazy for its 40 oz. Quencher mugs.
Victor Lee, the president of selling consulting group Advantage Unified Commerce, recently spoke to Fox News Digital about how the corporate used the social media platform to snag the eye of tens of millions of Americans and get them to purchase its tumbler – dubbed the “Stanley Cup” by fans.
The strategy netted the corporate ten times its usual annual profits in only a brief time period and made legions of consumers ravenous for the product.
The expert called Stanley’s entrance into the viral marketing space “good,” especially for with the ability to take something as innocuous as a water bottle and switch it right into a must-have product.
A “perfect storm” of viral marketing has helped Stanley tumblers fly off the shelves. Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The Stanley Cup craze has been in overdrive in recent months, evidenced in viral videos showing consumers buying up store shelves of the product inside minutes, and weeping for joy after getting them for Christmas.
The craze has develop into so prevalent that headlines have been made about parents telling bullies to put off their kids for not having an official Stanley tumbler.
Lee began by discussing the present social media landscape and the way the tumbler company was capable of use it to its advantage.
The expert mentioned how the present solution to win the social media race is by doing the perfect at leveraging the eye of the platform users for the corporate or influencer’s profit.
“Your phone is now saying, ‘if I actually have five minutes to your attention, where do you ought to go?’ And wherever you tap to, that’s who wins,” he said. “And in the event that they don’t give you sufficient great things to occupy five minutes, you already know you’re shutting that app off or that site off, and also you’re going to a different button, and also you’re hitting it. That’s the race.”
He noted, “Who wins the race is what they did together with your attention. And I feel that is where TikTok fell into” Stanley’s plans.
An empty shelf once stocked with Stanley tumblers in California. Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The expert further detailed how TikTok, in comparison with other social media platforms, is best equipped to trigger audiences right into a response, including buying products.
Providing an example, he said, “TikTok could be very well-known for, ‘I’m going to throw a random challenge. Go do it. Go run and jump into that swimming pool. Go hop the fence or do that.’ And there’s a whole lot of other controversial stuff.”
He also referenced the growing “#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt” trend that’s been sweeping the platform. The hashtag currently boasts 86.6 billion views and counting on all videos related to it. The trend involves users showing off the products they’ve bought while scrolling the app, which seems to drive more marketing and sales for the products depicted.
This almost compulsive virality combined with product placement means “now there’s real business implications” for these social media platforms, Lee said, before adding that Stanley making the most of this dynamic “was the proper storm.”
“I’d say they absolutely defined a moment of time and succeeded in it,” the expert declared.
The #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt trend played a job within the cup’s wild success. Stanley
Explaining how the corporate did this specifically, Lee noted that Stanley relied on a mix of things, including TikTok’s platform, and Stanley’s knowledge of its audience.
He said, “It’s not all luck, it’s not all strategy. It’s a high-quality mixture of it. Nevertheless it’s also a conviction of knowing where an audience is, on this case social media and TikTok specifically, after which allowing multiple adjacencies.”
Providing examples, he continued, “Such as you began progressive with an influencer, if you ought to call it progressive, then you definately went into TikTok. Suddenly it’s like, ‘Well, what’s the opposite adjacency? Well, is that this audience also a Target market? More Goal than probably other retailers? Are they a Starbucks audience? More Starbucks than other coffee? Let’s go there.’”
Stanley marketed its cups with each Goal and Starbucks. The Goal exclusive Stanley Quencher made news after viral video showed customers at a Goal in El Paso allegedly buying up the shop’s entire stock inside minutes. Lee said the brand partnership itself was a “traditional” strategy relatively than “progressive” by itself, but then combined with the design of cups and TikTok marketing, that’s where it develop into progressive.
Customers rush to get a limited edition Stanley Tumbler. Victoria Robino via Storyful
He said, “But they struck it where it’s progressive. It’s the massive Stanley Cup, giant one. It’s coloured. It’s exclusive. It’s that. In order that’s their innovation, which inserts.”
Continuing, Lee discussed how social media, particularly TikTok, has been utilized by Stanley and other firms to generate a connection between the buyer and the product they see on their favorite influencers’ channels for instance.
Mentioning his experience as the top of Hasbro’s digital marketing, he said, “During that point the craze in our world was the unboxing of toys. Why would a five-year-old kid watch an hour of YouTube of any individual opening up a toy? And what we discovered is there’s a psychological effect of surprise, ‘I actually have something, and it’s open,’ and there’s a connection to love, Christmas, of opening something up. And that to them just captured their attention.”
He added that TikTok presents the present type of that. “Now you fast-forward it six, ten years later. What’s that? Well, there’s entertainment value – TikTok is a large entertainment value of that.”
TikTok has generated a connection between the buyer and the product they see on their favorite influencers’ channels for instance. Mikayla Dixon via Storyful
Lee added that TikTok is having a “double effect” on users. “Were we interesting? And did you do something? And I feel that’s the magic intersection that individuals aren’t talking so much about,” he said.
Noting how marketing products advantages from this connection established between users and social media, he said, “Social media was at all times passive. I get to look at something, I get to interact, I get to feel that if there’s a star involved, that I’m closer to them than if I see them of their natural environment, on TV or in a movie. And social allows me a glimpse of their real life. Now, if I happened to begin buying something from them, it makes me a tighter connection.”
“Because social feels more intimate and I’m closer to you – and if I trust you – it’s an ideal storm, is what’s happening.”
