Launching a beverage brand in the UK

Stanley is a successful flask brand that has been around for over 100 years, which prides itself on being built to last and has even been featured in many iconic TV and film scenes throughout the years. They are an incredibly well known and established brand in the US.

In the UK however…not so much.

We were tasked with building an online social presence for the brand in Europe, starting firstly in the UK. We created a Facebook and Instagram page for Stanley from scratch with the aim to raise awareness and build a community for them in this territory.

We began our work with the brand at the end of last year, assisting with a Christmas campaign to drive awareness in November and push to sales in December. Now as we begin 2020, our goal is to build a strong enough community based on familiarity and trust so that when it comes to Christmas again next year, we have a larger following of Stanley stans, ready and willing to buy from us during the gifting season.

This was a strong 3-way team effort with strategy, creative and ads working closely together. We used page like ads and profile visit ads to hone in on hikers, backpackers, and campers. When we did this, we found many people were interested and more familiar with Stanley than we thought (a team of non-hikers, backpackers and campers). Every day we are gaining more interest from the correct audience of people who are either learning (and loving) who Stanley is, or have had their Stanley bottle proudly by their side for years. Targeting has been so accurate that people have wondered if their phones were listening to them, or have mentioned this is the exact product they have been in need of for a while. The comments we have been receiving have been ultimately super positive and we are confident that we have tapped into the perfect audience for this brand.

Content-wise, we have really had the chance to be inventive and flex our creative muscles. We have experimented with stills, videos, cinemagraphs, gifs, stories, carousels, art working pieces completely from scratch. We ensure that every asset we create plays a part in telling the Stanley story, keeping in mind their 3 brand pillars. Legendary. Durable. Relevant.

Tonally, we have strived to align with the US’ cheeky TOV, but have been mindful to alter the language to fit more appropriately with a British audience. While building a trusted fan base is our aim, we have been active in community management, ensuring we are on top of answering queries, complaints and ultimately joining in on the conversation. We use relevant hashtags to further try and reach fellow outdoorsy adventurers, and share UGC whenever we can.

For us as an agency, this has been one of the first major product clients we’ve worked with, and we are constantly learning every day. An unprecedented challenge we’re currently facing, however, is how best to approach we posting in light of COVID19. We have been having many conversations about how to act when the people you’ve encouraged to #getoutsidemore for the past 4 months now need to #stayathome. We are working on content that ensures we keep trust, positivity and bring the great outdoors into the safe indoors.

In a short time, we have gained almost 3k followers on Instagram and 8k on Facebook, full of engaged and passionate fans. We are constantly seeing interest and queries on the products featured in the posts without having to blatantly hard sell them. We are having a lot of fun experimenting with the ways we can creatively show off the products, and look forward to taking all our learnings along with us on our next product based venture.

Flossie Joseph – Strategist Wilderness Agency