Within the news that Solo Stove, and their parent company Solo Brands, could be facing bankruptcy was a notable change in their executive ranks. They have appointed an interim Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to lead the largest expense line item on their income statement.

Marketing at Solo Stove has been the source of constant conversation and debate ever since the Snoop Dogg ad and the subsequent dismissal of their CEO. That didn’t change in their last earnings call where their CFO again talked about ineffective marketing spend.

We are carefully evaluating the effectiveness and return of our marketing spend. Although the Snoop ads created good brand awareness last year, we are working to better position spend to be more efficient and tied to the outcomes that align closer to our goals.

Laura Coffey, CFO of Solo Brands

It’s interesting because that was very similar to the comments their CEO in 2024 made when he took over after the first Snoop Dogg campaign.

WE HAVE HIGH GROSS MARGINS, BUT WE ARE NOT SPENDING OUR MARKETING DOLLARS EFFECTIVELY, AND THEREFORE, WE ARE NOT ACHIEVING THE RETURN ON AD SPEND OR ROAS WE EXPECT TO HELP DRIVE OUR GROWTH.

Chris Metz, former CEO of Solo Brands

Despite those comments, they ran another Snoop Dogg campaign last year, which was referenced by Laura Coffey. Their CMO last year had a differing opinion on the Snoop Dogg ad as they announced a new one. It was a little puzzling because it gave the impression that the executive team wasn’t on the same page about marketing effectiveness.

To add to the questions around the Snoop Dogg campaigns, their CMO threw out some stats that didn’t seem to jive with their reported financials. They were also running these expensive ads into one of the weakest periods for the live-fire industry, when consumers were cutting back on discretionary spending.

We were talked everywhere. We got about over like $100 million in earned media. We could never afford that as a brand. But then we looked down the funnel and said, what else did it do for the brand? It was an amazing consideration campaign. We looked at all of our retail channels, Amazon, Google, and our own DTC site. The surge in purchasing intent was unquestionable. Also, our organic search exploded. We had over like 500% increase on search. I would like to brag one thing. We also saw search and Snoop numbers going up. We saw these search numbers going up. We also drove Snoop recognition and awareness, let’s just call it. I’ll take that. But also the question was, did it drive sales? Did it convert? And we saw the conversions number going up. So 31% increase of sales of fire pit alone in four weeks of the campaign. We also saw the cost of acquisition going down by a lot. 22% of our cost of acquisition declined during that period. So in summary, it was really good for the brand, it was good for the business, and it’s amazing for the company.

Luana Bumachar, CMO of Solo Brands

There is some truth to what Luana Bumachar said about the Snoop Dogg campaign. I’m sure it created a phenomenal amount of marketing value for Solo Stove. It got the brand seen by lots of people that had never heard of the brand before.

That’s important for brand building, but expensive brand building may not be the best use of cash as earnings are declining. According to a study done by NP Digital, partnering with celebrity influencers has the worst ROI.

In the weak sales environment we’ve seen over the past year, consumers have been cutting back on discretionary spending. The only exception to that is with innovation, consumers still will spend money on that.

Solo Stove had almost no innovation last year, and spent 23% of their revenue on marketing. It seems they would have been better suited spending more on innovation while they shifted their marketing spend to areas that convert lower in the funnel. I can say from the click through rates on our content, the articles that by far do the best are for innovative new products, and the ones that do the worst are celebrity endorsements.

Ultimately for Solo Stove, it’s led to them to appoint Liz Vanzura as the interim CMO. She’s worked with their interim CEO previously in the auto industry. She has extensive experience in marketing, including leading marketing for brands like Cadillac and Hummer. For Solo Stove’s survival, hopefully she can execute on their new strategy.