If you’re from Michigan and are not familiar with the iconic 100-year old company, Stormy Kromer, we would think you’re lying. The iconic cap is a staple from the Upper Peninsula in Ironwood, Michigan and if you are a true Michigander, you own at least two.
Working with Stormy has been a dream for our team, the company has big reach with small town values. This past holiday season, our goal was to blow their past year’s sales out of the water through strategic media outreach. We were excited to make the Midwest standard an even bigger national player in the outdoor industry.
And if you want the TL;DR – we did.
Stormy Kromer History
This isn’t just some hat. It’s history, it’s families, it’s small-town production making an international impact.
Developed in 1903, George “Stormy” Kromer, a semi-pro baseball player and railroad engineer, kept losing his hat on the train. Annoying, right? He, of course, asked his wife, Ida, for her expertise on keeping the hat put, so she added an earband to his favorite baseball cap. He wanted to keep his ears warm and his hat snug — not that much to ask. Well, it worked.
Not only did it work, it was wildly popular amongst the railroad personnel. Once the adventurers, workers, dreamers and those who appreciate style found out about it, “the rest is history”.
Bob Jacquart, the CEO of Stormy Kromer, only added more character and charm to the brand when he purchased the company over 20 years ago.
The company wanted to ensure Stormy Kromer captured the right media attention early in the year before the big holiday season.
Enter us, the media badasses we are.
The Opportunity
Stormy Kromer was already a well known brand, they just needed a little…oomph and the 8THIRTYFOUR megaphone.
Our goal was to grow Stormy Kromer’s brand awareness outside of the UP into the hearts of people across the country.
Stormy’s busy season runs from late summer through early-spring, with the holidays being the company’s largest sales push.
With the past two years being full of supply chain challenges, worker shortages and more; 2021 needed to be a big year in sales.
The Magic of Public Relations
What a lot of people don’t realize is holiday pitching begins months before any “normal” person is even thinking about Christmas. We started strategy and research in May of 2021, we were focused on gift guides, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, summer activities etc. Late summer is when we channeled everyone’s favorite fat guy, Chris Kringle.
We quickly knew that Stormy Kromer needed more than just PR. Of course we’re biased, but integrated campaigns are where your investment pays off!
We started an influencer campaign with an email marketing strategy and website audit leading up to the season.
We launched social media ad campaigns curated to purchasing as well as social media management to increase engagement.
Let’s just say, it worked.
Results
We ended the campaign with
- 56 Articles Featured (Over 20 syndicated stations)
- 521,858,796 unique visitors per month (yes, millions with an M)
- 14% increase in conversions
- 4% increase in average cart value
Did we mention The Today Show? Yeah, that was kind of a big win.
