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Solo Stove’s official “smoker” Snoop Dogg
Solo Stove PR Newswire
DTC outdoor stove brand Solo started the year with a major shakeup at the top after its marketing strategy with Snoop Dogg yielded disappointing profits. The company has decided to part ways with CEO and President John Mellis and bring in new leadership to resolve issues.
This is an unexpected turn of events. Just a month ago, the marketing community and the broader public were celebrating what seemed like a great viral marketing campaign for the little-known Solo brand. But now that the dust has settled, we know that viral success does not equate to financial success, which raises questions. Have we exaggerated the value of “going viral”?
Since the advent of the social web, “going viral” has become an attractive proposition for marketers and business leaders alike. With the right amount of investment and the right seeding, a small idea can ripple and reach millions of people with little additional investment from your brand. Researchers call virality the “ultimate free lunch” for anyone with a message, idea, or product they want to spread to the market. For a DTC brand like Solo with a limited marketing budget, the impact of viral success can be extremely beneficial to marketing efforts.
On the surface, the Solo campaign was very clever. The brand partnered with Snoop Dogg, the iconic rap star known for his affinity for smoking cannabis, to promote the brand’s new line of outdoor smokeless stoves. To announce the partnership, Snoop took to his personal Instagram page to trick his more than 84 million followers into believing he had “decided to quit smoking.” The misdirect sparked a social buzz and a healthy amount of speculation, spreading across the web and making headlines in major publications.
@Snoop Dogg
snoop dogg instagram
The idea that Snoop had stopped smoking marijuana seemed unfathomable, but of course, that was the point. A week later, the internet was set ablaze once again when a video revealed that Snoop’s decision to give himself a “smoke” had nothing to do with cannabis and everything to do with Solo’s new smokeless pit. The viral nature of this campaign was praised for its ability to contextually match the product’s differentiating features with cultural perceptions associated with Snoop.
Although no results were seen, the campaign was considered a success as everyone was talking about it, including the current company. Brands that were once under-recognized are now part of the public conversation. True, this will lead to financial glory. Based on what we know about virality, this phenomenon should definitely lead to solo free lunches, right? The problem with this logic, however, is that virality involves the simple transmission of content or ideas. However, it does not necessarily mean that it will be adopted.
The distinction between viral pass-alongs and adoption is important for marketers because marketing’s job is to influence the adoption of behaviors. Don’t drink this, drink that. Vote for her, not him. She doesn’t go to watch her movies, she goes to watch his moves, etc. Virality, on the other hand, is a means of distribution, a reliable medium, but marketers want it to do more than just convey information. Marketers aspire to the emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and desired engagement that is said to be the result of word of mouth, or something called virality. Therefore, it is not enough for information about brands and branded products to spread from person to person. As marketers, we want this information to influence subsequent consumer behavior.
This creates a line between the spread of information and its impact, as the difference between virality and cultural contagion. Virality focuses on the rate at which something spreads within a population as a function of time. However, cultural transmission refers to how something spreads and becomes integrated into the cultural characteristics of a group of people.
It is one thing for information to spread among people, but it is another thing for that information to influence the influence, actions, cognitions, and desires of others. That is the holy grail, the ultimate measure of success. The phenomenon of interest to marketers is not the rapid transmission of information, but rather understanding how the behavior of others changes as the transmission of information is adopted into the cultural practices of a group of people. .
This gets to the heart of the investigation. Are we exaggerating the value of “going viral”? Of course not; in fact, it has misrepresented the core function of marketing. Our efforts as marketers should focus on designing activities that myopically move people. Andre Benjamin proclaimed, “If I can’t move my legs, I won’t eat.” And therein lies the problem. Solo could get people talking, but it didn’t move people as a result.
One criticism could be that the brand did a great job of connecting the product to the partner (Snoop), but perhaps could not connect the brand product to the people in a similar way. As a result, recruitment may be hindered. Or, as funny as the campaign was, maybe it was interesting enough to talk about, but there just wasn’t a good use case for the product to stimulate consumption. Either way, virality played its part. It got people talking. But marketing also has to play its part. It’s about moving people.
In a statement announcing the leadership changes, Solo interim CFO Andrea Talbox wrote:
“Although our unique marketing campaign increased Solo Stove brand awareness to a new and expanded consumer base, it did not result in the sales growth we had planned, and combined with increased marketing investment, our EBITDA It had a negative impact.”
Sure, awareness is great, but action is even better.
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