Snoop Dogg sent the internet into a flurry of speculation last month when he made a very out-of-character announcement on social media: “I’ve decided to give up smoke.” 

A few days later, the marijuana aficionado followed up his viral announcement with a video confirming many commenters’ suspicions that his pledge to go smoke-free was merely a marketing stunt. Less predictable, though, was the brand behind the buzzy partnership—Solo Stove, a company that produces smokeless fire pits, pizza ovens and other outdoor appliances.

For many consumers, Snoop’s posts teasing or revealing the partnership was the first time they were exposed to the 13-year-old brand. That boost in brand awareness was precisely Solo Stove’s goal, having primarily focused its marketing efforts up until that point on “making sure every dollar we spend comes back to us with some form of return,” said John Merris, CEO and director of Solo Stove’s parent company, Solo Brands. 

The brand’s stunt amassed more than 31 million likes, comments and shares across its campaign content across Instagram, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X, formerly Twitter. It drove 1.2 million brand mentions on those social posts and in news articles, and generated a total value of $43.5 million in exposure, a Solo Stove spokesperson said in an email. Global news coverage of the campaign also produced over 19.5 billion overall impressions, worth an estimated $37.5 million in media value, she added.

But despite its success, the campaign nearly fell apart before Solo Stove and The Martin Agency—which worked with the brand to develop the campaign and partnership with Snoop Dogg—could get it to the finish line, Merris told Ad Age. He was adamant that the marketing push run ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which together comprise Solo Stove’s “biggest sales period and most-concentrated web traffic period,” but efforts by the agency to reach Snoop’s team ground to a halt in late September, he said. 

“Ultimately, I was able to backchannel my way to Snoop in a really fortuitous series of connections,” Merris said, explaining that his general counsel is friends with a chief marketing officer at another company, and that CMO is friends with another marketer who had worked with Snoop on a past campaign. That web of relationships led to the formation of a group chat and a month of text message and voice memo exchanges before Merris finally spoke with the rapper in early November. (Of course, Snoop’s marketing network is vast, considering he endorses multiple products, including Corona, Jack in the Box and Skechers, to name a few.)

“The guy who I roundabout got connected with had pitched Snoop the campaign high-level [and] verbally, and I got a text message from the guy saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to call you in three minutes. Make sure you pick up the phone,’” Merris said. “When I pick up the phone, it’s Snoop on the other end. We pitched the idea to him—the genesis of it was ‘You’re the “Doggfather of smoke,” and we manufacture smokeless fire pits. We think there could be something super special here—almost a double entendre.’ And he was like, ‘This is so dope. You need to talk to my attorneys, and if you can get them there, we can move fast on this.’”

Snoop didn’t officially sign the contract with Solo Stove to become the brand’s “smokesman” until roughly seven days before the campaign video was filmed, Merris said—and the shoot itself took place Nov. 10, just six days before Snoop made his viral social media announcement. “Everybody that I talked to, including [Snoop’s] whole team, was like, ‘It’s miraculous that we pulled this off,’” he said. 

In September, when The Martin Agency included a picture of Snoop Dogg amid a slew of pitches for campaign concepts, Merris immediately decided the rapper would be the perfect face for the brand’s first national, awareness-focused marketing push, he said. The agency fleshed out its Snoop pitch, creating a mock-up of an X post from the rapper that made its way to the final copy of Snoop’s announcement: “After much consideration and conversation with my family, I’ve decided to give up smoke. Please respect my privacy at this time.”

The post, which he shared on X and Instagram to a combined 104 million followers, caused an immediate stir, especially within the cannabis industry.

“I think what we were all expecting was that he would turn around and drop either a [cannabis] gummy or a smokeless vaporizer,” said Lisa Weser, CEO of Trailblaze, a PR agency representing cannabis brands. “When he came out with Solo Stove, I thought that was remarkable, because that's a brand outside of cannabis and one that nobody really saw coming—and a brand no one had ever heard of. But it just really put [Solo Stove] on the radar very quickly.” Snoop Dogg himself contributed several creative elements to the social media campaign and the video announcing his partnership with Solo Stove, Merris said.

The rapper ad-libbed several parts of the campaign video, including him swapping the word “funky” for “sticky icky” in the line, “I’m done with it—done with the coughing and my clothes smelling all sticky icky.” And the final scene of the video, featuring Snoop gleefully waving a marshmallow on a stick over a fire pit, was the 52-year-old’s first time roasting a marshmallow, Merris said. 

Snoop also made several social media posts over the weekend between his announcement he was going smokeless and the Solo Stove partnership reveal, which “were not originally part of our plan,” but ultimately supported the stunt, Merris said. He pointed to a Nov. 18 Instagram post from Snoop captioned “natural high,” tying back to his supposed pledge to give up smoke. 

“We were like, ‘Man, he’s really leaning into this,’” Merris said. “This is fantastic.”

Though Merris was keen on the Snoop Dogg partnership the minute it landed on his desk, he also worried it might be “too on the fringes” and could potentially alienate Solo Stove’s existing conservative-leaning consumer base, he said. But early on, when he shared the campaign concept with his wife, who was familiar with Snoop but not a fan of his, and his 16-year-old son, a massive Snoop Dogg fan, both “had giant smiles on their faces,” which led Merris to realize “we were really onto something special.” 

Read more: 7 CMOs on how their children influence their marketing

Solo Stove’s relationship with Snoop is set to continue into 2024, Merris said, as the brand “negotiated a partnership with Snoop that is much longer than just this quarter.” The brand already has plans in the works for continued work with the rapper, he said. 

Solo Stove also followed up its Snoop Dogg partnership reveal just three days later with a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and a TV spot that ran during the parade broadcast—though the timing of the two was coincidental, as Solo Stove secured its inclusion in the parade “well before Snoop was even an idea,” Merris said. But both the brand’s partnership with Snoop and its Macy’s parade features represent Solo Stove’s “first taste” of a large-scale marketing campaign and investment in a brand awareness push, he said. 

“We set the bar pretty high for ourselves, but we are pretty excited to go and see what we can come up with next,” Merris said. “We’re still early in our story, and there’s a lot of room to continue to build brand awareness and equity with consumers.”