Dive Brief:
- To promote its new Star Wars toy, toymaker Sphero ran a campaign on Snapchat that helped sell out the new toy in hours, according to the Wall Street Journal.
- The Snapchat campaign used five influencers to get 10 million views in 24 hours.
- Sphero was tapped by Disney to make the new $149.99 BB-8 robot toy that was released in 14,000 global stores on “Force Friday” last month.
Dive Insight:
Sphero, a company that creates connected entertainment robots, was part of a recent startup accelerator program of Disney’s, and ended getting a deal to create a new Star Wars robot toy. To market the toy on “Force Friday,” Sphero partnered with an accelerator classmate, Narativ, a startup that helps form connections between Snapchat influencers and marketers. The result was a Snapchat influencer campaign that included no paid ads and achieved very impressive results – 10 million views in 24 hours. More importantly, the toy sold out within hours in 14,000 stores around the world.
“We found people who love to travel and like tech, but more importantly they were all Star Wars fans which we thought would completely go crazy for it," Dan Altmann, Naritiv’s co-founder and CEO, told the Wall Street Journal. "Snapchat is almost like a hyper reality, and it’s hard to fake it. This is your life you are filming. It’s not a scripted comedy. So [if you fake it] it’s gonna show really blatantly.”
