Celebrities and Social Out of Home: The Synergy of Snoop Dogg
January 9, 2024
What do Solo Stove, Skechers, and Grubhub have in common?
If you’re a New Yorker, you probably knew instantly the answer was Snoop Dogg. That’s because the rapper/entrepreneur/Martha Stewart bestie has been all over NYC subway advertising and Times Square billboards lately in out of home campaigns from those three very different brands.
Why is Snoop the “smokesperson” for so many products? What’s the strategy of using celebrities in OOH?
The short answer is amplification. The long answer is – well, the rest of the post!
Let’s start with Skechers, where Uncle Snoop isn’t just a spokesperson. He’s in fact a full-on creative partner, dropping the Snoop Dogg x Skechers: OG Capsule Collection sneaker line last August.
By advertising at subway stations in NYC with two-sheet posters, Skechers was able to hammer home awareness of its new product line. Static ads in subway stations make an outsized impact with 100% share of voice, long dwell time, and frequency.
Snoop also starred in a digital out of home campaign on the subway, this time for Grubhub, whose ads invited hungry New Yorkers to “get delivery like a G.” This DOOH campaign ran on Livecards inside subway cars, as well as our Digital and Video Urban Panels.
DUPs and VUPs are unique in that they are the only media formats that impact both subway riders and street-level pedestrians. They’re positioned on either side of the stairwell to the subway mezzanine – with the full-motion VUPs on the side not facing the stairs. Safety first, right?
Finally, Snoop partnered with firepit maker Solo Stove for a limited-edition product, one that earned viral buzz when Snoop shocked fans by posting to his socials that he had “decided to give up smoke." (The product was a smokeless stove. That’s the joke.)
126,000 retweets, 152 million views (SOURCE: X, formerly Twitter), and 4.7 million Instagram likes later (SOURCE: Instagram), the brand capitalized on its momentum with an advertisement in Times Square on The Bird to promote the product.
So back to that opening question – why are celebrities the not-so-secret weapon of a successful OOH campaign? Three reasons.
First, the celebrity comes with a ready-made audience. Snoop has over 20 million Twitter followers, 84 million on Instagram, and 27 million on TikTok. And the closer and more authentic the alignment is between the celebrity and the brand, the more that celebrity’s audience can be activated.
Next, celebrity-based ad campaigns get earned media coverage. Snoop’s Solo Stove stunt got attention from CNN, NBC, CBS, BET, the Associated Press, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, People, Forbes, and USA Today, among too many other places to count.
Third – and this is where out of home really shines – social amplification. Billboards and transit advertising are uniquely suited for sharing. Dollar for dollar, OOH drives 7.0x the social posts and 5.9x the social searches compared to all other media (SOURCE: Comscore, 2022). Which makes sense when you think about it – after all, what kind of weirdo shares a banner ad? When was the last time you saw a photo of a newspaper ad in your Instagram Stories? That’s social out of home, baby!
From clever copy to user-generated content, from 3D creative to real-life special effects, there are plenty of innovative ways for advertisers to tap into the power of #sOOH. But there are few more reliable than a good, old-fashioned, celebrity endorsement.
You bring the celebrity. We provide the canvas. Together, we can build brands. Get in touch to learn more.
Author: Jay Fenster, Marketing Manager @ OUTFRONT
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