Your product is a life hack. Or maybe it’s technically a work hack. Use that to your advantage.

Because everyone wants work to be easier, to go more smoothly, to be more efficient.

So if you can serve them up a shortcut that feels like a secret and looks pretty too, they’ll be easy to convert.

That’s why we’re taking lessons from Stanley and how they unlocked a whole new audience with the release of their life hack: the Quencher.

Together with Celigo’s Content Director, Leah Westfall, we chat about marketing your product as a lifehack, tapping into the FOMO, and offering aesthetic options.

About our guest, Leah Westfall

Leah Westfall is Content Director at Celigo, a leading integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS). She joined the company in August 2024. At Celigo, she is building a team of content strategists and writers, and working to bring their    platform to market through full-funnel integrated campaigns. Prior to her current role, she co-founded innovative software platform Moxie. There, she also shaped the go-to-market and content strategies. She has also previously served as Director of Content Marketing at RingCentral and Content Manager at Connect First, Inc.

About Celigo

Celigo is the leading enterprise-grade integration platform that blends cutting-edge AI with technology, enabling organizations to discover, automate, and optimize every business process. ​​The Celigo platform is called “Integator.io.” About 1000+ customers use it. Celigo’s customers use it to set up integrations to and from NetSuite, Salesforce, Hubspot, and 100s of other connectors.

About Stanley

The company has been around since 1913. It was founded by William Stanley Jr., who was an inventor. And he created a vacuum-sealed steel bottle that would keep whatever was inside hot or cold, longer. Stanley has become known for making long-lasting functional products. For the longest time, their hammertone green steel thermoses were what your grandfather or dad would take camping or to work.

Now, the Stanley Quencher has become really popular among women primarily. It’s now less of a purely utilitarian object, and more of a fashion accessory. The Quencher is a steel bottle with a lid and straw. The bottom is tapered so it fits in a cup holder. It comes in different sizes, but it was originally a 40-ounce bottle. And you can get it in tons of different colors, and even customize it with different designs. It retails for $45 dollars and up.

The popularity has been credited to various blogs and sites over the past few years. But it’s mainly thought that sisters Ashlee LeSueur and Taylor Cannon along with their cousin, Linley Hutchinson who run e-commerce blog The Buy Guide, were the ones responsible for its recent surge in sales. The Quencher was one of the first products featured in 2017.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From the Stanley Quencher:

• Market your product as a life hack. Let your audience into a little secret: Your product will make their lives easier, save them time, and streamline their workflow. Leah says, “People want to do their jobs better, faster, smarter, more efficiently. So are we able to provide a hack or a tool that allows people to go and solve their pain point or solve the thing that's so annoying in their day to day business? It's like, is there a way to do this better?”
• Tap into the FOMO. Leverage your superfans with a large social audience to evangelize your brand and amplify a sense of FOMO, or likewise, inclusivity. Leah says, “It’s like, ‘Oh, I see somebody with this and they look like me. So if they're using that, I should probably use that too,’ or like, ‘We're similar because we both appreciate the same things and live this active lifestyle and want to be healthy. So if she has it, I should probably have it also.’ Because we buy the same things. We have a similar mindset. We have the same goals. We have the same pain points. So people are drawn to this feeling of inclusivity.” Ian adds that Stanley also creates demand by releasing limited runs of their tumblers. He says, “The constrained nature of the supply and demand aspect is always interesting. Like, that there's a limited number and they would keep selling out. Everybody always wants something that's sold out.”‍
• Offer aesthetic options. It could be as simple as letting customers choose their color, or customizing what their product looks like. Ian says, “the colors [of the Stanley Quencher] are really cool, and they do 100 percent stand out. And I think there's just a great marketing lesson here about variety being the spice of life. People like to accessorize. Not just to accessorize their bodies or their appearance, but people just like having options.”

*”A water bottle doesn’t have to be just red or blue anymore. You can get matte orchid or ice cream pink. And it's flipping the idea that it has to come in a really outdoorsy kind of color. What use to be red, blue, or green now comes in pale pink. It's like, ‘Oh, that was made for me.’ It gives people the option or chance to have their identity tied into your product a little bit.” - Leah Westfall

*”One thing that’s so important is this idea of the influencer. Finding them and using those channels. Then you need to find a way to accelerate them. Once they're out there and they're doing their thing, the secondary piece is getting your customers in the same room as your prospects. That's a big thing for B2B marketing. Use your influencers, use your key customers, help accelerate their stories, let them tell it in an authentic way, and then put them in virtual rooms or physical rooms, in digital spaces with prospects so that they can then share their stories organically.” - Ian Faison

*”We are all consumers by nature. But we can tell when we're being marketed to, and that's such a turnoff, especially to younger generations. So tell that story in a really authentic way, like in a case study or a customer success story, allowing the people to be like, ‘We didn't know what we were doing. We just went out and we had this major problem,’ being really honest and raw. That's good marketing and good storytelling because of the authenticity.” - Leah Westfall

Links

Get a Stanley Quencher

Connect with Leah on LinkedIn

Learn more about Celigo

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both nonfiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com.

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avelino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK.

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.