Objective

TikTok is at the heart of Stanley’s classic brand, helping it evolve from a 110-year-old outdoor brand to being named one of Fast Company’s “12 Objects That Defined 2022,” one of Ad Age’s Top 20 Brands of 2023 and Adele’s favorite water bottle.

While the brand’s relatively recent rise to cult status was driven by Quencher-loving Gen Zers and Utah moms, in early 2023 Stanley was ready to broaden their audience, as well as take ownership of the narrative around its brand and its product lines.

Strategy

The secret behind the brand’s success is simple: Stanley creates lifestyle essentials that make life better and more colorful, and lifestyle essentials become such by showing up in culture. That’s why the people who love Stanley don’t just love the products, they love being a part of the Stanley community. 

It was our job to make the Stanley TikTok community magnetic to more people. We started by defining audience interest pillars that would help our brand reach new people who were primed to love Stanley just as much as our current audience. 

• Food-and-beverage culture. It’s a no-brainer that we would align the brand with food-and-beverage culture. We found ways to show up authentically, like tapping into Tomato Girl Summer with a video of a ripe tomato-red Stanley gracing the picturesque beaches of Europe or a simple yet effective hack to use a Stanley Quencher to keep your pint of ice cream cold no matter what the weather. 
• Trending culture. We also wanted to stay top of mind by quickly tapping into trending TikTok moments. Throwing pink bows on a Quencher to make our products more “coquette” or taking a Stanley on your daily “silent walk” or even how often we think about the Roman Empire (anytime we’re thirsty, of course). 
• Real-time response culture. In addition to defining the topics where we had a right to engage, we also kept eyes and ears open for opportunistic moments where we could respond and go BIG. That’s how we leapt into action to help a TikTok user whose viral post featured her car, destroyed in a fire, and her Stanley Quencher with ice still clattering inside. While other brands may have simply engaged with her video or replaced the Quencher, we did one better—Stanley’s President responded via a now-famous stitch response, offering a brand-new car.

Results

The Stanley brand needed to broaden its audience while staying true to its core community. We achieved success by showing up in the culture our audiences care about that have far-reaching audience appeal. 

Trending content is pivotal to developing credibility and authenticity on TikTok, and a huge key to Stanley’s organic growth. For example, our #WaterTok drove over 1.9MM organic views, and Stanley Hacks drove over 333.5K views. Harnessing trends is responsible for driving multiple viral videos accumulating millions of views for the brand. 

Our quick and meaningful real-time response to the Car Fire moment added proverbial fuel to the fire and engaged existing fans of the brand as well as built immediate affinity with new consumers, inspiring many to buy their first Stanley. The impact of this lightning-fast reaction generated 56.4MM views, 7MM likes and 69.4K comments (with overwhelmingly positive sentiment). As one of many users clicked, “*adds Stanley cup to cart.*” 

Overall Results

When you pair trends and deep community insight, people pay attention. In total, Stanley has amassed an audience of 1MM (a 2,341% YoY increase) with 106MM+ total organic video views (a 3,821% YoY increase), over 10.5MM organic engagements (a 16,009% YoY increase) and a 9.97% organic engagement rate. 

Media