Brand vs Performance Marketing

What Snoop has taught us, and why his latest campaign hasn’t necessarily gone up in smoke.

If you follow the latest marketing news (anyone? Just me?) you’ll know all about Snoop’s viral brand collaboration with Solo Stove Smokeless Fire Pits.

In November just gone, Solo Stove came together with Snoop to trick the internet into thinking the rapper had given up “smoke,” before revealing that actually, he was partnering with the brand to promote their smokeless fire pits. It was a viral sensation, gaining Solo Stove 60,000 Instagram followers and 30 million engagements post campaign, amassing countless earned media impressions, hailed as a marketing masterpiece and generally putting Solo Stove in front of a totally new audience.

Less than two months later though, Solo Stove walked their CE saying the heightened brand awareness “didn’t translate into the expected boost in sales.” And it now basically everyone on the internet has changed their tune, writing this campaign off as a total failure.

BUT, the Snoop collaboration was a high-profile awareness campaign and this massive shift in strategy needed a massive shift in ROI expectations.

Pre-Snoop, Solo Stove had focused on performance marketing - direct response marketing to sales focus. When you’re running a brand marketing campaign, you’re thinking long term, and revenue return is a slow burn.

Remember:

Brand Marketing:

• Nurtures trust and loyalty over time.

• Creates enduring connections with your audience.

• An investment in your brand's future.

Performance Marketing:

• Offers immediate results, but... Focuses on short-term gains with easily measured ROI.

Why Both Matter:

Brand marketing lays trust's foundation, and performance marketing converts it into action. Success lies in the blend.

Solo Stove Smokeless Fire Pits are a high ticket product and expecting the 60,000 new (potential) customers Snoop bought in, to immediately click and convert is simply unrealistic. If Solo Stove wanted to see immediate sales come through, putting Snoop’s no doubt huuuge fee toward product marketing - things like digital display ads targeting their current audience, Google Adwords or email marketing to their database - would have been more likely to give them that.

It’s too early to say how successful the Snoop X Solo Stove campaign will be, but one thing for sure is that it really will go up in smoke, if the ongoing team don’t work hard to nurture and convert their new audience into customers.