Stanley The Stanley ReFresh
Setting a century-old brand on fire
- Cannes Lions - Brand Strategy
For a brand that was built on preserving hot and cold temperatures, Stanley was lukewarm. Despite a history of innovation—including the invention of the now standard, double-walled, vacuum seal—the brand was seen as part of American history rather than current social culture. It was the bottle our grandfathers took to the construction site.
Eclipsed by rivals for that traditional outdoorsy customer, Stanley also faced an onslaught of new category entrants post-pandemic—with the brand capturing less than 2% of the booming Outdoor Specialty market in 2021. Stanley was essentially unknown in the category it created. Stanley made a great product, but it had limited appeal—neutral-colored products keeping beverages hot for a mostly male audience in declining numbers. To return the brand to category leadership we needed a creative strategy that could crack open the appeal to the broadest possible audience but stay true to a century of history.
Approach: Creating cultural availability
Creating cultural availability
Based on the growth trends in female fitness and lifestyle the key insight was as simple as it was radical: to make Stanley hot again, we had to go cold. We made a decisive shift from male to female consumers to capture a larger share of the market; from hot beverages to cold drinks to reflect their growing desire for health & wellness, and from outdoor adventure to everywhere hydration.
But not only that, the real breakthrough was to reimagine Stanley as a lifestyle brand—a must-have accessory. We wanted our new female-skewing audience to refuse to leave the home without it—phone, keys, handbag, Stanley. Shifting from work utility to lifestyle accessory meant encouraging Stanley to move beyond a core product range in a handful of flat, conservative colors toward eye-popping, collectibles in an endless variety of shades and, eventually, headline-making celebrity collab exclusives. And our vehicle to do all this? A bold shift from just traditional marketing to leading the way with TikTok.
We listened to women and steeped in their culture. Rather than try to land a memorable line or bet big on a single Super Bowl spot, we marshaled budgets to make sure we could continually add value to the TikTok spaces where our new audience lived. Rather than physical or mental availability we prioritized cultural availability. Not spending on one big idea but developing a series of creator collaborations and a newsroom agility that meant we could hop on every hashtag.
Results Pair listening to women with deep community understanding and connections happen
Great creative strategy changes perception, shakes category foundations, shifts target audiences and puts brands back on top. Our strategy for 111-year old steel bottle company Stanley did all this and more—creating one of the most talked about products in any category in 2023, and it didn’t happen by accident. Conversations started in social led to conversations on even bigger stages. With 110M TikTok views, organic endorsements by Adele and Lionel Messi, and its very own sketch on Saturday Night Live, Stanley scored four billion+ earned media impressions. We went from being confused with Stanley Black and Decker to becoming a household name, stealing 23 points of market share along the way.
Now we’re on a mission to find new ways to keep the momentum going…
How Stanley’s Quencher became the vessel of choice for Barbie—and every creator on #watertok
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