Despite the criticism it endured, Solo Stove’s stunt campaign with Snoop Dogg actually was a big success—but it could have been better.

That’s the takeaway from the outdoor firepit brand today, as it unveils a follow-up to the heavily debated November 2023 effort, which was lauded for generating huge awareness but disparaged—even, at one point, by Solo Stove itself—for supposedly failing to move product.

In fact, it did move product, Solo Stove says now, just not as intentionally as it could have. The new campaign is meant to be more holistic in its tone, timing and full-funnel marketing objectives.

New spots once again feature Snoop, fresh off his starring role in NBC’s Olympic coverage, along with longtime collaborator Warren G. The pair are seen pitching the brand’s smokeless firepits with unabashed directness—what Snoop refers to as “blunt marketing” (“blunt,” of course, being another word for joint—the new campaign, like the original, is built around marijuana references).

Solo stuck with Snoop for a few reasons. First was the enormous response in culture to the first effort, in which the rapper claimed in social posts that he was ready to “give up smoke”—which people took to mean giving up marijuana, before he revealed it was a Solo Stove ad.

Second, after doing an extensive post-mortem on the 2023 campaign—including new segmentation to identify core and growth audiences—Solo decided Snoop was indeed the right ambassador for the brand. In other words, after largely winging it the first time around, this time its choice of endorser was backed up by data.

“The new segmentation is a lot more diverse—25-to-35-year-olds, but growing in 18-24,” said Luana Bumachar, Solo Brands’ chief marketing officer. “Then we looked at Snoop. The intersection of who Snoop is, his audience, our audience, the tonality he carries, the tonality we want to carry—he felt like the right partner to continue with.”

That tone—self-aware and comedic, with a cool factor that isn’t belabored—wasn’t an obvious choice for a firepit brand. But last year’s work proved Solo Stove could play in that space, Bumachar said.

“Firepits are not cool, in theory. A firepit is not culture. But we realized we can own a place in culture,” she said. “We also learned that humor works for this brand. And we learned that we should let Snoop be Snoop. When he works with a lot of other brands, it’s scripted. For us, he riffs.”

Indeed, The Martin Agency came in with scripts but captured a lot of off-the-cuff dialogue in Snoop’s own voice, which would have been impossible to craft ahead of time. The footage was cut into traditional 30- and 15-second spots, as well as some two dozen 6-second spots, ideal for pre-roll and TikTok.

The media buy will include high-profile programming such as Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football” and NBC’s “The Voice,” where Snoop Dogg returns as a coach this season. The campaign also includes audio, search, performance and retail marketing, as well as Snoop-branded firepits and merch.

The self-aware nature of the “Blunt Marketing” campaign—this is advertising that talks about being advertising—plays off the notoriety and debate around the earlier work but also just fits into Snoop’s brand of comedy.

“It’s more spontaneous, he’s more himself, and it’s actually a much better campaign,” said Bumachar. “He’s here to sell Solo Stoves. We’re not going to hide it. And our products back this up. It’s blunt about the products, it’s blunt about the benefits. And he’s blunt that he’s there to sell—that’s the role of an influencer.”

How the prior work was ‘misunderstood’

The new campaign arrives following a huge amount of debate in the industry over the merits of the previous one, which also came from The Martin Agency.

Snoop’s “I’ve decided to give up smoke” Instagram post on Nov. 16 was one of the biggest earned-media moments for any brand in 2023. In December, John Merris, then CEO of Solo Brands, told Ad Age he was thrilled with the results and was looking to extend the campaign. Later that month, Ad Age ranked the campaign at No. 18 among the top 40 ad campaigns of the year.

However, Merris left the company in January. Solo Brands simultaneously doused some of the excitement around the campaign, with its interim chief financial officer stating in a press release that while it had raised awareness, “it did not lead to the sales lift that we had planned.”

Bumachar, who joined the company in February and spent the better part of two months unpacking what had happened, now says the brand was “misunderstood” in that press release.

“It drove huge awareness but also purchase consideration across every retail channel. Search exploded. And we had a 20% increase in firepit sales—it was our four best weeks of the year,” she said.

There were clear problems, too, she said. For example, there was not enough inventory to meet the resulting demand. And the timing of the campaign—coming at the end of the peak firepit sales season in autumn—was questionable.

Launching the new campaign is August “is way more logical,” she said. “We’re in a discretionary category. There’s a longer conversion period versus traditional CPGs, where I come from. [Last year’s campaign] drove a halo effect through this year, but we could have done a better job from a timing perspective.”

The new campaign, she added, “is designed to build mental availability right from the start. It drives consideration and conversion throughout, but really hits on conversion. We want to be the No. 1 brand when people think about outdoor living space. And when they’re ready to convert, they don’t have to search.” 

Solo Brands, which along with Solo Stoves sells products under the Chubbies, IcyBreeze, Oru Kayak and TerraFlame brand names, earlier this month reported a 0.5% increase in second-quarter sales. Its sales in the fourth quarter of 2023, when the first Snoop campaign launched, fell 16.2%.