Photo: Solo Stove
Why Didn’t Snoop Dogg’s Viral Campaign for Solo Stove Pay Off?
A campaign featuring Snoop Dogg promoting Solo Stove, a maker of fire pits, generated billions in earned media impressions, but a sales shortfall and the exit of the brand’s CEO have some marketers wondering whether viral campaigns are overrated.
On Nov. 16, 2023, Snoop, famously known as a cannabis enthusiast, announced to his combined 129 million social media followers that he would be “giving up smoke,” leading to shocked reactions by fans. Four days later, fears were eased when it was revealed that the rapper’s comments were part of a Solo Stove campaign. He said, “I’m going smokeless — Solo Stove fixed fire. They take out the smoke.”
In the days after the campaign broke, Solo Stove gained more than 60,000 Instagram followers, related posts received more than 30 million engagements, and extensive media coverage was scored across mainstream outlets from CNN to People Magazine. Ad Age ranked the campaign at #18 on its list of The 40 Best Ads of 2023.
However, on Jan. 8, Solo Brands, Solo Stove’s parent, announced that it was axing its guidance as the campaign “raised brand awareness” but “did not lead to the sales lift” planned. CEO John Merris agreed to “mutually separate” from the company.
The shortfall led some marketing experts to conclude that the campaign arrived too late and celebrity campaigns overall are more about driving brand awareness than conversion.
Sam Joseph, chief revenue officer at Kyra, the creator agency, said in an Adweek column, “The idea is to grow awareness, bring in new audiences and turn them into customers over time, perhaps in the spring/summer period. A slow burn, you might say.”
Grace Clarke, founder of Grace Clarke Consulting, believes better coordination with creators, brand ambassadors, and top customers around the potential viral moment could have delivered a quicker sales payback. She told Ad Age the goal should be to “create arbitrage to amplify that virality.”
In a LinkedIn column, Nyah Chapman, founder and creative director of media agency Luxe List Media cited a disconnect between Snoop and the brand’s outdoor enthusiasts, “vague messaging,” and a lack of a “clear call to action” as possible shortcomings.
Fernando Machado, a brand advisor for plant-based food-tech company NotCo, believes Solo Stove’s campaign may pay off in time. He said in a column for Ad Age, “Yes, the top-of-the-funnel activity indeed drove awareness. Will it convert? Maybe. Depends on the target audience it reached, the price, the product, the placement, etc. And sometimes it does require a bit of time.”
Discussion Questions
Why do you think Solo Stove’s campaign with Snoop Dog missed the plan despite going viral?
Does it offer more lessons about the use of celebrities in campaigns or expectations around viral paybacks?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Paula Rosenblum
Co-founder, RSR Research
Gary Sankary
Retail Industry Strategy, Esri
The Snoop Dogg campaign was successful in grabbing attention, especially through the initial cryptic post by the Snoop. The problem is that attention did not translate into sales. This is most likely because the campaign was not targeted at the right customer groups so a lot of the eyeballs on it were not in the market to buy Solo Stove products. Targeting and resonance are everything in marketing. All this said, what the campaign may have done is to create brand awareness which, over the longer term, may translate into revenue. Even so, that’s a pretty expensive outlay for relatively small long-term gains.
famously known as a cannabis enthusiast
Perhaps that’s not really the right credentials for this product? Oh, sure, it made for a cute inside tok…er joke – see, two can play at this game! – but after congratulating themselves over their cleverness, the promoters likely found little overlap with customers…or would-be customers, actually.
Right after the Snoop Dogg advertising campaign began for Solo, Snoop implied that going smokeless meant he was giving up weed. Anyone who has followed Snoop for any length of time would find that hard to believe.
But shortly thereafter it became clear that “smokeless” referred to Snoop’s ad campaign for solo. Despite 60,000 new Instagram followers, the momentum died quickly. In my opinion the realization that it was all about an ad campaign was a momentum killer. The joke turned people off.
Solo would have been better served simply to avoid the joke, and instead, just go full on with Snoop’s commercial. That would have worked better.
In addition, I think Snoop is suddenly over exposed and advertising too many product types and brands. This is causing Snoop’s fans to view him less cool, and more mainstream. His effectiveness might be dwindling. Db
It drove awareness for the smokeless stove category, it probably gave every manufacturer a sales bump…and promoted Snoop.
The lesson here is larger than the use of celebrities in campaigns. Also “viral campaign” is just that, viral, you can’t plan it.
I suspect that the demographics for Snoop Dog followers and Solo Stove potential users are on two different planets.
On top of all of the other cogent observations, adding this – It definitely grabbed attention but by the time the marketing message was delivered, many minds had all ready wandered. Every time I saw it, my first question was “what is this really about again?” Too much smoke.
I interviewed Mr. Merris a while back and was tickled (that’s the best word I can come up with) by the company’s attention-getting campaigns. At the end of the day, Solo is selling…outdoor stoves. Celebrity tie-ins have always had the potential to create a lot of buzz – in the days of social media mega-exposure, confusing hype with demand is a constant pitfall.
I certainly paid attention, but I’m more interested in Snoop than I am in a Solo Stove. I don’t think I’m alone in that.
I think it was simply a matter of a clever idea catering to the wrong demographic.
This episode illuminates the ALWAYS prevalent issue with marketing spend-having internal alignment on the expected results. In the case the creators (of course!) position is the campaign did exactly what they said it would do. Other stakeholders outside of the CEO saw it differently and here we are. Would it have made a difference if the CEO had taken a more consensus building approach toward the decision to run the campaign? Perhaps, but I doubt it-the campaign probably would not have run at all.
Another reason why Chief Marketing Officers are (last I checked) the shortest tenured positions in the C-Suite.
Or maybe Snoop isn’t the person people who would be interested in buying a stove from. Most marketers have great ideas but awareness doesn’t equal sales. I’ll be curious what resulted from Pop Tarts expected 12 million in free awareness from their ritual eating of the mascot. Fun yes – but did it move the needle? If not, “playing the long game” is really hard and why so many resort to coupons and discounts which destroy margin.
I suspect you’d need a magnifying glass to see the overlap between people who enjoy outdoor campfires and fans of Snoop Dog on a Venn diagram. Clever, funny, missed the target audience.
This Snoop Dogg campaign did bring brand awareness – to the Snoop brand.
Snoop Dogg is everywhere these days, so what made Solo Stove think people would immediately equate him to their product? Watching the spots, I expected Martha Stewart to walk out.
If the goal was to use a celebrity to build buzz connecting the Solo Stove to cannabis enthusiasts, then the campaign did its job. 30 million social media engagements, plus media coverage, is nothing to sneeze at. But if the goal was to sell stoves the campaign needed to go in another direction. Sometimes celebrities and influencers aren’t always the best choice.
Three things come to mind. First maybe an overly commercialized Snoop Dogg has finally jumped the shark. Two, if Snoop is still cool, then perhaps he was more popular than the product and so that earned media accrued to him, not Solo Stove, and once the world took a deep breath and held it after realizing that Snoop was still getting high his fans moved on. And/or Three, somebody didn’t do their homework and make sure that the people who glorified smoke were the target market for smokeless fire. No matter what the cause, it wasn’t the world’s best thought out campaign.
We are fully in the attention economy, and brands that capitalize on the moment can reap significant rewards. While the Snoop Dogg Solo Stove campaign caught our collective attention for a few days and perhaps raised some awareness about the product, more than one viral social media campaign is needed to translate to scalable and profitable business growth.
In the short term, Snoop’s marketing campaign was considered a success, with Ad Age ranking it at No. 18 on its list of 40 best ads of 2023. The ad led to around 60,000 new followers on Solo Brands’ social media accounts. However, as we have seen, the social campaign didn’t help the bottom line. Solo forecasted growth plans between $520 million and $540 million in 2024, with those projections dropping to $490 million and $500 million.
In the attention economy, the critical success factor is always sustained sales growth. Beyond the intrigue and interest in Snoop giving up smoke, the campaign did not deliver, leading to CEO John Merris’s departure.
The answer is a question: Was Snoop the right influencer to drive sales?
I love a good branding campaign, especially when it tells the story of WHY, prioritizing differentiation with a little emotion for fun. Snoop appears to be the perfect choice here. Nicely done.
I’m within Solo Stove’s target audience and love the product. Guess I’m an outlier here in that I don’t have Instagram, watch CNN or read People. Would have been fun to see it launch back in November. Often the target audience is best activated in multiple media layers, not just one.
A large Midwest industrial distributor gave Solo Stoves to their Sales Team in 2023 as a Christmas Gift – most either re-gifted it to relatives or friends or put it on Ebay. Not everyone has a backyard or like to sit outside in the Winter.