Debra Brockelsby is an entrepreneur and the owner of the towel poncho business STOKEDNZ. In this piece, she breaks down her three most successful out-of-the-box marketing strategies that she has used to drive her brand’s success.
While we love cookies, cookie-cutter marketing has never been our thing! Maybe that’s because we love to zig when others are zagging… or maybe it’s because we are so values-led that being radically transparent is the only way?
A recent example is our “show us your tits campaign”, where we asked our customers to do just that. This initiative was charitable campaign that ended up being an unintentional success for our business; our objective was to raise awareness about self-checking and mammograms and to raise at least $25,000 for the Breast Cancer Foundation NZ (BCFNZ).
Why? Because against all odds, my best friend beat terminal breast cancer and is here 16 years later. As part of her treatment, she had a mastectomy and for years she wasn’t confident in public changing rooms and would avoid all public swimming if she wasn’t already changed. Luckily for her, we at STOKEDNZ make epic towelies (towel ponchos) that double as a portable change room and towel all in one. Long story short, this literally changed her life as she keeps one in the car and can now swim or change literally anywhere.
We decided to raise funds for BCGNZ because we figured she likely wasn’t alone in this! (Stats: one in seven women get it in their lifetime in Australia and one in nine in NZ).
An attention-grabbing charitable campaign
Here’s how the “show us your tits” campaign worked: We made a fun video asking customers to “show us their tits” (get them to hand draw their boobs), make an epic design, weaved into the towelie, sell them and give 100% of profits to the BCFNZ.
The towelies, towels and hair wraps were modelled by Breast Cancer survivors (many tears were shed that day!), and they all did a video testimonial which was shared across all channels.
The results were super high customer engagement, several PR placements including TV, magazines and radio. And we raised just shy of $40,000!
The intention was always to raise awareness and as much cash as possible. I hadn’t even thought about how many new customers we would get. Truthfully, I was just trying to hit the 25k that we were contractually obliged to donate to BCFNZ (to be able to use their logo etc on our product).
Then, I realized that 66 per cent of people who purchased from this campaign were new customers! And of them 32 per cent bought non-fundraiser items (full margin), I was pleasantly surprised and really stoked! Especially as we had menial marketing costs, due to most of it coming from PR and word of mouth.
The exercise showed that people get behind a cause, but they’ll stay for epic products and strong business values.
“Don’t buy our products”
Another out-of-the box marketing initiative we’ve taken is telling customers “don’t buy a towelie”.
The idea being that it’s not worth buying one of our products if it’s never going to be taken on adventures. They weren’t made to sit in a cupboard.
This is why we don’t do Black Friday campaigns: we don’t want to encourage someone to buy something they don’t need just because there was a deal on it.
Spotlighting our negative reviews
Third marketing strategy: A post we made on social media (that hopefully won’t land us in trouble!) was calling out a bad review on a Facebook post.
The reviewer had commented, “I can get that cheaper on (insert cheap online overseas manufacturer)”, to which I replied the following:
“Yeeeeeeep ya probably can.
But next time you want a fair-paying job or some sponsorship for your play centre/sports team etc – maybe hit up (insert cheap online overseas manufacturer) too and I’m sure they’ll be most obliging.”
We’re a small business who:
- pay our makers fairly
- pay our staff fairly
- just raised and donated $40,000 to BCFNZ (and always buy a bunch of safe nights for women and children in need during Black Friday)
- sponsor and support so many local sports clubs, play centres etc.
And I can assure you that (insert cheap online overseas manufacturer) and other big chains where you may find a towelie cheaper are maybe not doing one (or any) of those four things mentioned above.“
Get brainstorming, and stay true to yourself and your values
My advice to you, fellow small-business owners: grab yourself a cookie and begin a brainstorming session about how you can zig while others zag. In an AI dominant world, going all in on “you” and your values is going to be the best way to stand out. Annnnd you’ve absolutely got this!
Get zigging pal!
