Weird: Solo Stove & Snoop
Campaigns vs Brand stories: When borrowed equity undermines your brand
I was watching the Olympics and I saw Snoop ads for Solo stove as part of the “Blunt” marketing campaign. This is a dumb campaign. Unfortunately, it’s also effective, because it got me to watch and I’m pissed they stole my attention.
Marketers, you can do better.
You might have read about the first attempt at this direction last year. You for sure saw the “i’m giving up smoke” stuff.
The first run at a Snoop-driven campaign happened last fall. They got some awareness, but not enough sales:
And, it sure didn’t help the stock price.
But, after a new CEO and full strategic review, they decided to double down on Snoop.
Hopefully they got the supply chain and retail outlets ready, and they decided to do a “full funnel” approach this time around
So, they’re fixing the execution and finally integrating all the parts. The campaign will be better, but what’s going to become of the brand itself?
If the campaign “worked”, why is this dumb?
When the idea is based on a pun - “Blunt”. Get it? haha! A pot joke. You can almost hear the half-baked ideation the creatives did before they pitched it (see what I did there? yes, its that bad)
Talking down to the audience - You can guess what went into the brief: “Our audience is media saturated and very knowing about advertising. Let’s acknowledge their media literacy by being meta”. So we get “I’m here because you’re more likely to buy this because I’m Snoop”. But, breaking the fourth wall here is poorly executed.
It’s out of “voice” - Solo has a whole suite of other products and they have a pretty deep well of content and brand materials that are out of synch with this. The brand voice, tone, and material is inconsistent and contradictory.
Snoop is great, but a gimmick - There’s no reason, really, to have a guy like Snoop be associated with your brand unless you want to do a gimmicky spokesperson thing based on that bad pun
But the real problem here is that now Snoop is the brand. The campaign will eat the brand and the brand will become the campaign. They’re selling Snoop and hoping you’re dumb enough to want to buy a stove because of him.
They’re not really building the Solo brand, per se, as one that will be enduring, here for the long haul, one that demands a premium based on product quality, service, etc. They’re building Snoops brand more than their own.
Best case: They’ve got a spokesperson that can do the work of driving awareness, recall, and favorability. Just like Flo from Progressive, Lucky from Lucky Charms, Sasquatch for Jack Links and that Gekko.
Worst case: They turn into the George Foreman grill in their category.
I’m not the audience for this brand, so I'm probably missing something obvious.
(Hat tip to Web Smith at 2PM for his write up on this campaign. If you’re doing work on brands and DTC, 2PM is a must-read)