THE “SNUGGIE” STRATEGY – LAUGH AT YOURSELF ALONG WITH YOUR VIEWERS: JOIN “IN” ON THE PERCEIVED JOKE.
The article portion which follows was excerpted from the New York Times. As you read it, you may wish to imagine the song from the short-lived “Macarena” dance craze playing in the background:
December 21, 2010
Lots of Laughs, and Even More Sales
By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN
IN the fall of 2008, when the Snuggie, a blanket with sleeves, was introduced in an infomercial, it was mocked by television hosts including Jay Leno and Ellen DeGeneres and went viral, garnering millions of viewings on YouTube and spawning hundreds of parody commercials.
Consumers purchased about four million Snuggies during the 2008 holiday season, according to Allstar Products Group, its maker. Typically, a success story for a kitschy infomercial product would end there, with the Snuggie going the way of items like the Clapper (“Clap on! Clap off!”) and Pocket Fisherman (“The biggest fishing invention since the hook!”).
But not so for the blanket with arms, which, from a marketing perspective, turns out to have legs as well.
By the end of 2010, the company will have sold 25 million blankets, the equivalent of one for about every 12 residents of the United States, and Scott Boilen, president of Allstar Products, which is based in Hawthorne, N.Y., says there is no indication that sales are waning.
“The Snuggie has revolutionized the way people think about blankets,” said Mr. Boilen. “People are collecting multiple Snuggies — it’s like a shirt.”
To encourage such collecting, there are now 15 styles of the Snuggie, including one with a nylon shell for outdoor use, a Sherpa model with thick white lining, a smaller version for children, and a large version for couples, with three armholes — one to be shared. There is even an expanding line for dogs, including a wearable Snuggie and a blanket-topped dog bed.
The original spot for Snuggie followed the standard infomercial format: state a problem, and then present the product as an ingenious solution.
“Blankets are O.K., but they slip and slide, and when you want to reach for something, your hands are trapped inside,” says a voiceover in that first infomercial, as an actress fidgets under a small throw when the phone rings. “Now there’s the Snuggie, the blanket that has sleeves. The Snuggie keeps you totally warm, and gives you the freedom to use your hands.”
New Snuggie commercials have a less overt sales pitch, featuring a group of actors of all ages wearing Snuggies while enthusiastically singing modified versions of holiday songs, like “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” (“We wish you a Snuggie Christmas, and a hands-free New Year.”), and “I Have a Little Dreidel” (“Oh Snuggie, Snuggie, Snuggie, stay warm, keep your hands free, I think I’ll buy a Snuggie, this Hanukkah for me. Oy!”).
The brand will spend an estimated $12 million in advertising for the holiday spots. Last year, Snuggie spent $34.8 million in advertising, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP.
For the first time, the ads are appearing not only on cable, but also on network television, most notably during the broadcast of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC. And while the newer ads may be as corny as the original, they are not, by any standard measure, infomercials since they are only 30 seconds long and do not seek a direct response from consumers — namely that they call a toll-free number to order now (“while supplies last!”).
Instead, the new spots indicate either that the product is “Available at retailers everywhere!” or mention retailers by name.
The Snuggie has, in fact, evolved nearly completely from a direct-response brand to a retail brand, with about 95 percent of current sales coming from bricks-and-mortar retailers including Wal-Mart, Kmart and Walgreen’s, according to the company.
Infomercial products often find their way onto retail shelves, but Thomas Haire, editor of Response Magazine, a trade publication that covers the direct-response industry, said Snuggie was unique.
“Getting into retail is not rare anymore but becoming a strictly retail brand is pretty rare,” said Mr. Haire. “Usually even if something is successful at retail they still want to sell it as direct response, but there is no ‘call now’ push left on Snuggie’s TV ads.”
Critical to the success of the Snuggie, Mr. Haire said, is that when it was so widely ridiculed for looking silly, the company did not flinch.
“If they got touchy about it and said, ‘This is a really strong product and you shouldn’t make fun of it,’ then I think it would have faded away,” Mr. Haire said. “But they were able to laugh at themselves, and I think the American consumer sensed they were in on the joke, too.”
####
The article’s message is a very important one: If your ad campaign is perceived by the viewing public as ridiculous, and your product (as well as the commercial) is being lampooned by celebrities despite its possible merits, you have already succeeded in getting everyone’s attention - this is good news, if you leverage it properly.
The way to keep their attention is to laugh at your own commercial masterpiece (disasterpiece?) right along with the crowd, and to carry the joke even further – perhaps even to point of absurdity. Your product might not be as ingenious as you had originally thought – but it might pick up enormous sales momentum as a novelty, instead.
Whether it is seen as a utility or as a silly novelty, the sales will ring up and the revenues will roll in. If your ad campaign is inadvertently funny, learn to go with it. Humor is a wonderful branding mechanism. Even when it happens by accident.
Remember Ron Popeil’s “Veg-O-Matic?”
I rest my case.
Faithfully,
Douglas Castle
Get MAD... Get CRAZY... Get MOVING... Get ATTENTION!
Visit us at http://MadMarketingTactics.blogspot.com
Tags, Labels and Terms: Mad Marketing Tactics Blog, The Snuggie Strategy, Branding, humor, novelty incentive for sales, laughing all the way to the bank, Douglas E. Castle, TNNWC News Releases, absurdity sells, riding the tide of viewer opinion, The free celebrity/ comedian "anti-endorsement", getting their attention, leveraging mistakes for fun and profit, TNNWC Buzzworks, Gist Video, advertising, mirth marketing, the Macarena, Zen Marketing - Being "One" With Your Audience, trends
TNNWC Group, LLC, in Brief
TNNWC Group, LLC empowers emerging enterprises locally, worldwide and inter-globally by providing 1) informational publications and products; 2) an indispensible suite of crucial, unparalleled services for business planning, development, growth, marketing and capitalization, which are offered to all of our Members who are all 3) interactively involved within a growing, mutually-supportive collaborative, cooperative community of individuals and businesses. We are run by entrepreneurial people, and we live to serve entrepreneurial people and the business initiated through their inspiration… from the garage-based technological start-up, to the “small business” wanting to break free of its limitations and grow larger at an accelerated but sustainable pace. We Empower Emerging Enterprises™ - not with “happy talk” and “grandiose ideas”… but with real tools and expert interpersonal guidance to use each of them for their optimal effectiveness. Visit us at TNNWC Group, LLC. - Join us. We have so much to offer you. Our philosophy is simple: UNITE AND CONQUER.
Capital, Traffic Building, International Customers and unique SERVICES.
The National Networker Publications™ produced by TNNWC Group, LLC
Resources for Business Planning, Development, Capital and Growth
0 comments:
Post a Comment