Remember those few days where we thought Snoop Dogg was giving up the weed?
Turns out it was all part of a marketing campaign for Solo Stoves, a smokeless fire pit company, and had nothing to do with the green smoke that’s become an integral part of Snoop’s persona.
If companies were fueled by social engagement and blog posts, this would have been a resounding success. Snoop’s original Instagram post of quitting the smoke racked up nearly 5 million likes alone and his follow up post promoting Solo Stoves has 62M views (for what it’s worth) on X.
But as we know, social engagement is nice but if it doesn’t turn into cold hard cash than it’s practically worthless and it seems this whole marketing stunt was a complete flop.
Last Monday, Solo Stoves saw the largest one day drop in its stock price in company history, falling over 30% after the company issued a revenue warning to investors. That basically means they were lowering expectations for sales dramatically, a move that is only done if things are really not good… The Daily Outdoor Retailer reports the company is lowered expected revenues by some $50 million dollars.
Since the start of the year, the company’s stock is down 52.27%, according to Barrons.
This marketing flop was so bad that the company forced out the CEO behind the push, John Merris, who personally contacted Snoop’s brand manager with the idea. He had been head of the company for 5 years, and while the amount Snoop was paid for the campaign is not publicly available, it’s safe to assume it was quite a large amount.
Interim-CEO Andrea Tarbox made the following statement regarding the lowered revenue expectations which lead to the company’s valuation collapse:
“While our unique marketing campaigns raised brand awareness of Solo Stove to an expanded and new audience of consumers, it did not lead to the sales lift that we had planned, which, combined with the increased marketing investments, negatively impacted our EBITDA”
Solo Brands is now turning to Chris Metz, former CEO of Vista Outdoors (parent company of brands like Remington, Federal, Bell, and Camelbak) to right the ship.
This is a good lesson for us all. Just because something is big on the internet does not mean it’s actually big or successful in real life.
While countless advertising companies listed the campaign as one of the best designed ads of the year, if it doesn’t increase sales it’s not a good campaign, and I’m willing to bet this will be a case study in many business classes for years to come.
Wishing all the best to Solo Brands as they try to turn things around.
Let’s crank up some Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg in their honor.
