marketing teardown: 🥤 stanley

In partnership with

hey, marketer! 

first off - I can’t believe I’m a day late!

so sorry😭 I started a new job this week so it’s been a bit of an adjustment – but let’s jump in.

this week, I’m diving into a well-known brand (unless you’ve been living under a rock the past three years.

the amazing thing is that this brand is over 100 years old – yet, it just had a serious pop as a status symbol.

the giant cup / water bottle isn’t new – think klean kanteen, hydroflask, and other recognizable brands already existed in the space. so, why did stanley take off to become the status symbol of the industry?

in short – by tapping into their true fan communities.

brand in the hot seat: 🥤stanley

today's treasure trove

• who is stanley?

• stanley’s branding

• stanley’s community listening

• stanley’s product drops

who is stanley?

quick stats:

• youtube – 16k followers, 96 videos

• instagram – 1.3m followers

• facebook – 340k followers

• x/twitter – 11.8k followers

• tiktok – 1.3m followers

• monthly website traffic – 4.3m

I love how you can see stanley’s focus on their target audience just by checking out their social media numbers.

their target audience (for digital marketing) is millennial moms and their gen z/alpha kids. and those folks hang out on instagram and tiktok.

the brilliant hidden gem here is their website traffic, though 👀

for a legacy consumer product, one might think, “alright, they’re goal is to get brand awareness and increase in-store purchase” – but that website traffic shows a clear focus on selling directly to customers.

bravo for them for making the switch 👏 

but how did they successfully accomplish this?: product drops.

stanley’s branding

one question I love to consider when ideating on branding is: how to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing? (re: what liquid death did with water)

okay fine, stanley might not have revisited their branding in decades, but that’s part of their allure: it’s timeless.

forget keeping up with the hip, modern brands – stanley has stuck to its core principle: being a tough brand for working folks.

yeah, it’s got a bit of that nostalgia effect (kinda like pit viper, but it’s actually a legacy brand and not just manufactured lol)

they still maintain that nostalgic brand identity through their youtube content (stark contrast to their trendy instagram page though).

this sort of “rough and tough” brand identity is spot on.

as more folks work on computers, they desire manual labor as a means of escape – even if that means just watching construction workers and lumberjacks on tiktok. 😉

stanley’s community listening

why did this century-old brand become part of the zeitgeist in seemingly no time?

were they picked by the algorithm gods?

nope.

it was strategic customer research that clued them into a phenomenon going on: mom groups in utah were fanatical about their giant cups.

the stanley team combed through reddit and facebook and realized that they had an opportunity to connect with and serve that audience.

the mom groups loved the size, durability, and tough branding of stanley, but how could stanley create an offer for stay-at-home moms when their target audience was historically blue collar workers?

start with colors.

they partnered with an affiliate shopping media company called “the buy guide” – headed up by three women.

they ranked and rated similar products and declared stanley’s cup to be the holy grail (*ahem).

instead of the typical affiliate deal, the buy guide bought stanley cups in wholesale in colors that would appeal to their readers – you know the pastels.

these influencers sealed the cup’s place as desirable and even trendy.

then, consider that these buyers are also apt to post products they love and start a virtuous viral cycle.

stanley’s product drops

after the initial partnership with the buy guide, stanley has been doing their own product drops – more like a sneaker e-commerce brand than consumer drinkware.

instead of doing brand awareness campaigns and sending out new products to stock shelves in stores, stanley rode the viral marketing and drove traffic directly to their website, using their instagram and tiktok channels for discovery.

notice the difference between their youtube (blue collar story content) and their instagram feed (highly curated trendy product photos)

these product drops were selling out in minutes. 

this move is brilliant because instead of stocking on shelves, where stanley couldn’t control the environment or buying experience, they used their website to create anticipation and limit supply – cementing them even more as a status symbol.

wrap-up

the takeaways from stanley are:

• listen to your audience – your “true fans” may not be the customer persona you expect

• don’t flood the market if you’re a status symbol – if your brand has the golden opportunity to be recognized as iconic, hold back. this is why most luxury brands only artificially limit their production to a small number of items.

they continued to feed the hype cycle and they’ve really become the winner of the market. but how long can they keep that title?

thanks for reading and I’d love to hear what thoughts you have about stanley and this teardown. (and read the other deep dives here)

✌️,

tom from marketer gems