When Solo Stove, a DTC darling, wanted to go from “niche fandom” to “mainstream fame,” they knew they needed a level of awareness their budgets couldn’t buy. So we set out to use an innovative stunt to make the brand a household name. The key selling proposition for their signature fire pit is “smokeless,” so we enlisted Snoop Dogg, a renowned cannabis enthusiast synonymous with smoke, to drive conversation. The campaign sparked a frenzy that broke the internet twice first when he announced he was “giving up smoke,” and again, at the reveal it was a campaign for fire pits.

Solo Stove went from Kickstarter to IPO without ever advertising on a national scale, but in order to continue their pace of growth, they needed to expand beyond their traditional audience of outdoor enthusiasts. They developed products better suited for the backyard than the backcountry, but a shift of offerings doesn’t automatically equate to a shift in audience — so they needed a campaign to go beyond their outdoorsy core.

With a microscopic media budget and no mainstream awareness, the opportunity was to leverage PR and social to stir up a conversation about the brand, among a wider audience that traditionally wouldn’t consider them. The primary benefit is Solo Stove’s no-smoke ambiance, so we looked for someone known for just the opposite. An unlikely mouthpiece who happened to reach a cross-section of culture: Snoop Dogg.

Snoop was more than talent, we leveraged his incredible instincts as an entertainer and empowered him to have fun with the stunt. That collaboration unlocked cultural impact far beyond the collaborations with the 40+ brands he’s represented in the past. The difference was an invitation to leverage his persona in a way that felt organic, genuine and real. And because we kept the product out of the initial post, we were able to lay the groundwork for buzz in a way that kept everyone (including celebrities, media personas and economists) engaged in the campaign’s development at every twist and turn. In addition to viral success, it expanded their audience to reach more diverse/urban audiences.

The brief was to raise awareness and make Solo Stove a household name, which we accomplished in a mere 13 days. Having never run a national ad campaign, Solo Stove bought into our vision of a socially-led stunt designed to earn media via public relations, followed quickly by traditional media (TV, radio, OOH and performance digital). The integrated campaign was born from Solo Stove’s brand strategy; the insight that steered the creative concept was that while some people feel right at home in the great outdoors, others require a familiar comfort to fully relax. The strategy and tagline, “we fixed fire,” shed light on the company’s transformation of the earliest human invention: fire. Solo Stove took the smoke out of their pits and made fire into an experience you actually could enjoy, welcoming a broader audience to an outdoor experience the brand was uniquely suited to deliver.

The creative platform centered around “going smokeless” aimed to raise awareness of brand and primary product benefit. We cast Snoop Dogg for his international, multigenerational pop-culture iconicity and synchronicity with “smoke.” Outside of his music career, his endeavors seep into the cannabis industry, from investments to digital media to legal sale of the product itself.

He was an intentional casting choice to appeal to a new audience that had little overlap with Solo Stove’s usual outdoorsy core. He wasn’t just selling an LTO stove; Snoop was selling a lifestyle, one bolstered by his universal appeal, not just among hip-hop lovers, but Martha Stewart lovers and every demographic in between. Snoop broadened the perception of who the outdoors is “for” in our multimedia campaign that lit up social and then spread like wildfire across mass media.

Digital media has impacted traditional publicity models, with generational shifts in how news is generated and consumed. Social media is a news source for a growing number of consumers as well as journalists looking to cater to audiences’ need for entertaining, socially driven, cultural conversation.

Without a paid media budget to launch, we needed to generate widespread awareness for Solo Stove, its marquee product and key differentiator, by hacking this modern news model with an attention-grabbing, two-part strategy centered around an authentic and contextual celebrity partnership and well-coordinated rollout.

To ensure maximum impact, we:

Kept our message simple: “Solo Stove eliminated smoke for anyone looking for a more enjoyable backyard experience.”

Enlisted a “subject matter expert” with visible, authentic voice: renowned cannabis icon, Snoop Dogg

Created social content that was narrative-first and brand secondary

Paid off consumers’ intrigue with a limited-run signature line of Snoop Dogg x Solo Stove products

The Announcement: We kicked off our external communications plan with a salacious and unexpected announcement via social from our official “smokesman,” Snoop Dogg. The announcement was deliberately vague and free of brand marks or mentions in order to feed consumers’ voracious interest in celebrity news, entertainment and the social-fueled cultural conversation de jour. To let this intrigue and dialogue build, we allowed the announcement to live unaddressed for four days, while executing targeted embargoed outreach to tip off our stunt to top tier publications.

The Reveal: Four days later, we dropped the brand film in the place culture had been obsessed with following — Snoop’s social feed. A second round of trending conversation ensued as the influencers, outlets and pop-culture obsessives who had been speculating about why Snoop “gave up smoke” circled back to their audiences to explain what was really going on.

“Snoop goes smokeless” broke the internet not once, but twice. The initial announcement made “breaking news” across the globe, earning 5,629 unique earned media placements across 68 countries; with even fellow celebrities publicly speculating about the ominous tweet. When the launch video dropped four days later, those media outlets followed up, garnering another 4,317 hits, as brands and individuals alike meme-ified the announcement post in comedic solidarity. Weed stocks plummeted, while Snoop Dogg and Solo Stove’s social followings soared: increasing 1 million followers for Snoop and 60,000 for the brand.

On Instagram, the launch video garnered 52.3M views (+6,179% above Snoop’s average of 846.4K views). On X, the video garnered 61.7M views (+3,147% above Snoop’s average of 1.9M views). And on TikTok, the video garnered 53M views (+4,582% above Snoop’s average of 1.1M views). Solo Stove bolstered Snoop’s average engagement rate by 7,527% and Solo Stove’s campaign-specific social posts received 49,775% more engagement than average.

In totality, the campaign garnered 31 million engagements, 19.5 billion impressions, and $100 million in earned media value — far beyond what the brand could have afforded to spend. But it wasn’t just wildly successful in building awareness for the brand — it moved the entire funnel. Solo Stove saw a 500% increase in organic search, a 70% increase in revenue, 20% increase in average order value, and 22% drop in customer acquisition costs.