Studying the Stanley Cup Craze
Love them or hate them, as you start your social media marketing plans for 2025, a brand you should take notes from is Stanley 1913. The craze around their products is a phenomenon that should be studied ✍️
Image via Stanley 1913 and 2024 Mattel
Though you’d think it’s simply just a reusable water bottle, this 110 year old company leaned on one major thing to skyrocket their sales: community. Especially, influencer marketing and user generated content (UGC) to drive the fact that people are, in fact, using their products. People are inclined to do what others are doing, so the brand got to work partnering with the right influencers who would create the desirability of the product. If you have a Stanley Cup, you fit into this community of others who own one and are proud to carry one around - and as a bonus, carrying one around encourages you to stay more hydrated.
Furthermore, Stanley 1913’s CEO Terence Reilly just so happens to be the same person who “made Crocs cool again” during his 5 years being CMO for the brand, so leadership is obviously a huge influencer here, too. When a TikTok of a woman whose car caught on fire and the only thing that survived was her Stanley Cup (WITH ice still in it!) went viral, Reilly reached out to offer her Stanley Cups AND a brand new car, allowing the creators and the community to co-create the narrative that the brand cares about their consumers beyond seeing them as just sales leads. Word of mouth and online video testimonials truly took away a lot of the legwork for the team, because those simple yet effective moves helped their credibility and brand awareness blossom.
Like Dr. Marcus Collins, professor at the Ross School of Business at Michigan University said, “people trust people more than any form of marketing communications.” When marketers turn their efforts towards winning over a community rather than mass marketing to the public just for the sake of sales, you only help your brand out more. Once a consumer feels like they’ve made a genuine connection with your brand, they’ll instinctively become a soldier for you to defend the brand’s affinity and spread the good word (hallelujah). It’s basically free promo in exchange for your people-skills!
