Kids today are built different.

When I was a kid, the “must have” thing was usually a pogo stick, Weeble or, if you were really lucky, a Stretch Armstrong. Today it seems every teen wants a £300 pair of trainers, a bottle of Prime and a Stanley Cup. TikTok has a lot to answer for. 

Young kiddies, stuck in the scroll, influenced all day long by…well…influencers. It’s no surprise really that things have changed. In my day we spent our days rolling down the streets, not scrolling on screens! That’s enough of my “back in the good old days” rant anyway…Today I want to talk about Stanley. 

The Stanley Cup isn’t just sought after by pre-teens, it’s become a popular staple bit of kit for millions of people, with the company now boasting a hefty $750 million a year revenue. Pretty crazy, huh? So how did they do it? Well, mostly due to internet influencers! 

Thanks to some super smart influencer marketing, and their Instagram-aesthetic pastel-coloured cups, Stanley Cups has gone to another level. The benefits of the cups, I’m told, include their size – good for hydration, the handle- easy to hold, and its double-walled insulation – keeps your drinks cold for up to 11 hours and hot for up to 5…(sounds a bit like a Thermos to me!) Are they really worth $45 a cup though? I don’t know… But there’s one lady who really put the mug to the test. 

Danielle, a TikToker, was in a car accident, with her trusty Stanley Cup beside her. She thankfully escaped the car crash unharmed, but the car burst into flames, engulfing everything within it. Once the flames were put out, she returned to the car to inspect the damage, only to find her Stanley Cup still in one piece! The only thing to have survived the fire relatively undamaged. Not only that… the cup still had ice inside it! If that’s not an advert for good insulation I don’t know what would be… 

Anyway, she posted the video of her discovery online, and lo and behold, Stanley Cups – the super smart marketers that they are – contacted her and gave her a brand-new car! This obviously went viral, and will no doubt have benefited the company many times over. Pretty clever huh?

Now, I know we don’t all have the funds to give people free cars, and I wouldn’t think that influencer marketing is the way to go for most of you reading this, but I bet there are some “out of the box” marketing strategies that could really work for you. When was the last time you tried something a little wacky? When did you last throw some ideas around and see what landed? Sometimes it’s easy to get stuck in your ways, to stop innovating, to become afraid to try something big or weird or new. But those are usually the things that really pay off…

So what’s the wackiest marketing campaign you’ve ever run? I’d love to hear about it.