Case Study: Snuggie

Background

The Snuggie is a blanket with sleeves. Seriously. And believe it or not, when the Snuggie launched in the US last year, it sold millions. In Australia, Global Shop Direct appointed Access PR to launch the Snuggie for the first time in the Australian market.

The client wanted to go as mass market as possible with publicity. To shift beyond the usual nanna and pop market traditionally associated with a product like this.

It was daggy. Who, other than dags, would want to buy a daggy product?

The TV advertorial was so, so bad.

So bad, in fact, it was fantastic!

We convinced the client that we needed to embrace everyone’s inner dag and run with it.

We knew we were walking a fine line, though, as we couldn’t afford to alienate a large group of consumers who like the product. Nor did we want to go down the road to the point that no one had anything good to say about the Snuggie.

Our core idea was to get it to the right people in the media who would start the conversation about the Snuggie in the right tone.

No hard sell, nothing but a letter from the client inviting them to enjoy their Snuggie.

We gently pointed them to the advertorial and to a parody ad that had been uploaded onto YouTube.

We then used a combination of mass media and individual media approaches to launch the Snuggie across all categories of media.

Results

Bottom line?

They sold out.

The client says this is one of the best-ever results for them in terms of an immediate strong response from launch.

ROI is ridiculous. Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to give sales figures, but we can say they sold in excess of 50,000 units during the campaign and far exceeded sales targets.

It cost the client less than a cent for every 10 people they reached through our PR.

We achieved more than 20 million media impressions.

We hit the mark with our specially chosen media personalities.

Within hours of sending out the Snuggie, we had enthusiastic responses from radio and TV personalities and presenters, producers and journalists.

This began the process of generating word of mouth through their media activities as well as any social networking they were involved in.

Kerri Anne Kennerley became one of the Snuggies biggest fans. She regularly wore the Snuggie on her show as well as invited guests to do the same.

Todd McKenney and Sonia Kruger became enthusiastic Snuggie wearers. The Snuggie not only was discussed on radio, on their website and on their twitter page, but was also worn on their show Dancing with the Stars.

Peter Heliar on Rove did an entire segment with Will Ferrell on the Snuggie.

Even fashionista Melissa Hoyer has been raving online about the Snuggie to fellow journalists through twitter, facebook and her blog.

These were all people we specifically targeted.

A Current Affair and both Footy Shows (AFL and NRL) have done segments on the Snuggie. (All recipients of the Snuggie mail out)

Radio went nuts. We even had B105 in Brisbane wrap the Wally Lewis statue in a Snuggie before a State of Origin game – all captured on air, filmed and uploaded online.

We enrolled www.snuggiesightings.com and secured mentions of Australian Snuggie news and media.

High praise was received from the Snuggie owners in America who were blown away with the amount of exposure we received

Global Shop Direct Product Director Greg Thomas said: “Access PR put together an initial launch plan and subsequent follow up plans which resulted in an amazing uptake in all forms of media and in the end it seemed everyone wanted a piece of the action, including A Current Affair! The Snuggie phenomenon just ‘grew legs’ and kept on running as it became a household name and something of a cult product in an extraordinarily short space of time. There’s no doubt that the carefully thought out PR plan and subsequent management of inquiries not only exceeded our expectations but contributed significantly to the huge success of a fairly simple concept that is the Snuggie.”