How to grow a viral brand with Stanley 1913's chief brand officer

0:10Molly Innes: Hello and welcome back to the Marketing Week podcast. I'm Molly Innes, Work and Careers Editor and Podcast Lead at Marketing Week. And today we are joined by Kate Ridley, Stanley's Chief Brand Officer. Stanley is a brand with more than 100 years of heritage. Perhaps your parents and grandparents use their flasks and walks when you're a kid. or like me your awareness of the brand came from them going viral on TikTok post 2020. Kate has been in the role since 2025 initially joining the brand as a consultant to build out its global marketing function. She joins us today to explain just how she did that as well as where the brand is headed next.

0:45Molly Innes: Thank you Kate for joining us. Oh you're welcome happy to be here. So I was thinking as a starting point should we look at what comes after I guess viral success however you want to phrase it obviously the massive boom in Stanley I know when we met a couple months ago we were speaking about the sort of next steps for the brand the evolution new categories and so on but if you could take us I guess back into the room when you first joined Stanley last year could you describe sort of the position of the business and I suppose the brief that was outlined to you in terms of you know where you were to focus for the brand and sort moving from there?

1:22Kate Ridley: Yeah, absolutely. I was invited to come into the brand on a consulting basis, actually, to help Stanley establish a global marketing organization. At that moment, Stanley was on the absolute crest of an incredible growth period where just over five years, they had 10x the size of the business, which is phenomenal. And I think anyone who's been through that period of growth or something similar knows that you're kind of strapped onto a rocket ship and you are keeping up with the demand, you're listening to your consumers, and you're really learning a lot about where you can take your business and your brand.

2:10Kate Ridley: And you don't always have the time to pause and set up infrastructure and foundational platforms for future growth. And so that was why I was tapped to sort of come and support Stanley in setting up brand functions that could see us into that next phase of what we were becoming. So for me, that started with setting up a consumer insights and brand strategy group I helped to establish many of the global marketing functions. We stood up those really important functional areas like brand marketing that could help us set up infrastructure for the next phase. We brought merchandising into the picture, Global Merchandising Group, and started the process of transforming the brand for kind of longer term established success beyond the viral moment that we were having in hydration.

3:14Kate Ridley: And as I shared, we started working on a strategy for product diversification, for international growth, and for audience growth. They were the three areas that we really focused on. And, yeah, I would say the first step for me was just bringing in the right talent to make sure that we could build that strategy in the right way and get started on execution. It was pretty foundational, you know, just making sure that we had the infrastructure we needed for this next phase.

3:43Molly Innes: Yeah, that's so important. And I wonder as well for you coming in sort of on a consultancy basis and then taking on the permanent role, do you think that helps for sort of the wider picture of it?

3:54Kate Ridley: Absolutely, no doubt. It helped me in two ways. The first is that if you're consulting, you are really single-minded about your objectives. So I had a clear remit of, you know, set up a global marketing function, build a consumer segmentation model, and write a marketing strategy for the next few years. So as a consultant, I was just absolutely like maniacally focused on that. The other thing is a little bit more personal, I would say, because I was a consultant, I could just 100 % be myself. And I didn't really think about, do people approve of me? Do they like me? I was just 100 % myself and bringing as many crazy, creative and interesting ideas to the table because I didn't think that I was really going to be there beyond six months.

4:47Kate Ridley: So those two things really helped me a lot. And then the last thing I would say is I didn't really have the intention of taking on like a full-time corporate leadership role, but I absolutely just fell in love with the Stanley brand and the people at Stanley. And they're always the right reasons to be somewhere long-term. So it felt really good.

5:07Molly Innes: Brilliant. And going back to, you know, the setting up a global marketing function, it's quite easy to say but obviously I imagine really really difficult to actually execute and you know it's such a big thing especially on a on a global basis in terms of those building blocks and the I guess types of people but also types of roles could you tell us a little bit about

5:30Kate Ridley: you know what expertise you were looking for yeah absolutely Stanley had a small but very mighty team working on marketing and they were predominantly focused that team were predominantly focused on the US and they had a lot of expertise in US consumers channels they were I would say very heavily invested in in social affiliates influencer marketing and they were really really strong in that space. So I would say Stanley was kind of leading in social moderation, community engagement, but we had some capability opportunities in things like global brand marketing and thinking beyond the US market.

6:18Kate Ridley: So I really look to invite people into the Stanley Marketing Group who had that level of experience, who could think from the perspective of what does it mean to build a global brand how can I create a creative persona and tactics that will work as well in Shanghai as they will in Cologne and they also will in Los Angeles and that's a really different skill set and so we brought in some really strong marketing leaders that had that global perspective and we've started to build some incredible creative storytelling that you will see come from stanley over the next few months that i think is very distinct and has a very different point of view than what you've seen from stanley in the past yeah it's exciting and

7:13Molly Innes: i'm gonna mention that i'm sure it probably gets mentioned to you daily i mean i very vividly remember the TikTok video where the woman's car had like got on fire and the quencher sort of was the only thing that I'd survived it and I guess for me that was one of my earliest memories of the brand I wasn't super familiar beforehand and sort of fitting within that I guess Gen Z millennial sort of female audience base there's obviously the my grandparents who have the products and so on and I know you spoke before about broadening the customer base the audience and I think from my perspective Stanley's already always managed not to alienate different audiences when it's gone boom but I don't think you had the people who've been the brand for years and years wouldn't have been annoyed about the different directions and so on but as you're moving towards new audiences I wondered could you tell us a little bit about who you're targeting why you know I've seen some of the the new product launches already but if you could talk to us for the listeners around what you're launching as well and yeah I guess that next evolution

8:14Kate Ridley: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I always start thinking about going back to the purpose of the brand and asking, what do people already know of us? And that is very rich territory when you're talking about a brand with 113 years of legacy. And I think that's a really good place to start. We did a lot of research, global research on what do people know of Stanley? And the results of that research were just incredibly positive. People have a lot of awareness of the brand globally, which I think it even surprised us outside of the US how high our unaided awareness was. And lots of great perception around Stanley's quality.

9:02Kate Ridley: stanley has always been known as a brand that has a kind of built for life brand promise that comes through in our product quality but also in our customer service and we just realized like that's extremely valuable many brands would love to have that type of heritage and legacy and perception and we need to embrace that and understand it and take it forward we spend a lot of time thinking about how do we double down on our brand purpose stanley's you know clear vision is that we fuel the human experience so we spent a lot of time thinking about okay internally how do we rally around that how do we get people really inspired and excited around that and then we added into the mix this new consumer segmentation model that focuses on three core groups and we did the like the hard yards of understanding those groups not not from a basic demographic perspective but more from a needs-based approach how are they living their lives how can stanley be more meaningful in their lives and we built from there from those two aspects you know the aspect of who are we what is in our dna that's really valuable and meaningful and who are we serving and then we started building our product portfolio around those two ideas and really thinking like okay stanley has such an important role in people's life right now in hydration we reshaped the category of hydration how do we take that energy and our brand quality and originality into other areas like food storage bags how do we take it into the category of cafe and I think that has been you know it sounds extremely simple but they're hard building blocks to get everybody aligned to that probably took us about six to nine months to make sure that we were absolutely square on who are we what do we stand for who do we serve and now we've got those boundaries like very very ingrained in our team and we've got creative freedom to kind of figure out, okay, how do we express that?

11:16Kate Ridley: How do we storytell around it? How do we put investment and focus onto those new product categories? So that's where we're at at the moment and we're starting to see some very positive signs of growth in those new categories and with new audiences but fully aware that it takes time. You know, it takes time to connect with new audiences and make sure that you have the right, you know, resonance with them. So you talked about Stanley having meaning across lots of different audience groups. And I would say the stronghold we had was with young women who are very invested in wellness and fitness. And we want to keep nurturing that, but we also need to extend and make sure that we're not in any way alienating men or families who are interested in outdoor pursuits.

12:05Kate Ridley: and say so yeah just broadening broadening that approach moving into those spaces and testing

12:12Molly Innes: the products and learning what will work and obviously customer segmentation be great to also hear a bit around how you work with the other functions as marketers super close to the customer dialed into all the time how are you working with the other departments of the business to make sure that what is coming through really meets those customer needs like that you mentioned well first

12:33Kate Ridley: of all, I would say we have a very, we have an interesting setup that in our brand organization, my responsibility is across product and design innovation, brand marketing, communications and PR, consumer insights and brand strategy, and also product merchandising. And I think that gives us like a very broad portfolio and those team members are extremely aligned with each other. So we don't have separation between the vision of our product and innovation or the vision of our brand storytelling and execution. And I think that structure is absolutely ideal. It means that our consumer facing functions are all, you know, in one group.

13:19Kate Ridley: And then probably our most important stakeholders internally, even though, of course, we're very connected into finance and supply chain and operations. but the functional group that we're closest to are our commercial leaders in the regions. So the team members who are building merchandising and marketing plans and sales plans in the different regions, we are super tight with them because they are really the first people who understand their customers and their consumers in the marketplace. So we put tons of energy as like unsexy as it sounds, we put tons of energy into our process. Like how do we stay really connected with those team members?

14:02Kate Ridley: How are we constantly like previewing product or innovation ideas with them? Brainstorming different marketing opportunities that can have global resonance, ideating on partners, brand partners who really are right for the Stanley brand. they're the team that we try to stay as closely connected to as possible and so you met my partner Ben who leads the EMEA marketplace you know I talk to him every week at you know more than once to make sure that whatever's happening for him in his markets that I'm aware of it and that our teams can be really connected and so far I think that's worked really well we do have a very creative and innovative culture.

14:47Kate Ridley: We are risk takers. We believe in the power of testing and learning and then taking those learnings and building them out for scale. So one example that I have is our team in China really saw Hirox exploding several months ago and just saw some of those new products that you mentioned, like our protein shaker, our hydration products, our bags as very relevant in that space and just had great respect for the community that High Rocks were building. So they tested Stanley integration with High Rocks over several different events in Shanghai. And now we're taking those learnings and working out, okay, how do we expand that?

15:33Kate Ridley: How do we do that on a bigger scale? So that's probably a good example of like how we try to stay super connected and build off the learnings in different markets.

15:42Molly Innes: It's really interesting and loads to pick up on there. But what you were saying around, you know, being focused on the process as well, I feel like it's rarely mentioned, like, you know, when we speak to people about, you know, how do you make this work? How do you do this? But if the process isn't there, like you say, nothing will work. It's, you know, it's so important.

16:00Kate Ridley: 100 % and it doesn't you know I recognize it doesn't sound like something that many brand or marketing leaders lean into or talk about that much but it truly was one of the first things that when I took on the full-time role at Stanley we invested in building a new go-to-market process to make sure that we yeah had the right people involved in the right milestones so that we could execute flawlessly.

16:26Molly Innes: I think you touched on partnerships there around you know what was going on in in China and I know you guys have been doing more sort of sports partnerships and moving you know more into that space last last year or so could you tell us just a little bit more around that obviously a newer thing for the brand to be doing and in terms of you know effectiveness quite a tricky thing there can be sometimes tricky things to pull off obviously you've got years of experience with Adidas and Old Birds as well but how how have you guys

16:54Kate Ridley: approach sports sponsorship well we see I mean sport is just something that I'm personally very passionate about but we know from consumer research just how meaningful it is to um to our consumer both as a participant and as a fan we started with the research looking at what are the sports that people are most passionate about no surprise to you it's global football is number one and that was really where we started. We started straight to the top, straight with number one with a partnership with Leo Messi and that was initiated about 18 months ago and just culminated in our fourth collaboration with him around the World Cup, which was just phenomenal.

17:40Kate Ridley: And we also recognised just the cultural impact and the community impact that different teams have and so we started researching who are the teams that invest the most into the community of their fans and it was clear to us that Arsenal through their not only their their culture but also the team at Arsenal they're very very aligned to the Stanley values and we are very aligned to their values and so we started a phenomenal partnership with Arsenal that's ongoing and yeah we just started with those type of building blocks like what are the sports that people are most into what are they watching what do they care about the most what are the highest growing participation rates and that really led us to the answer of how we should approach sponsorship and then everything that we do we try to look through the lens of stanley do that if we don't get engaged with like transactional pay-to-play sponsorships we really get engaged with does that athlete care about stanley have they do they use stanley products do they love stanley products do the values of our brand and that athlete or team align and so far that has worked out really well and it's because it's really apparent you know when you when you get into a meeting and you start talking about what the partnership could look like it's pretty evident in the first 30 minutes if it's the right partnership or not so we use the data on you know our consumers but we also use you know just the human feeling and instinct of is this the right match and yeah we're starting to see some incredible growth we've got a wonderful partnership with in the US Caitlin Clark extending into basketball we're going to continue investing into football in Europe and you've probably seen some of our products not only with Arsenal but with Juventus and with Paris Saint-Germain and as I mentioned like we're pretty invested in the space of competitive fitness and one clear example of that is our partnership with Hierarchs but a lot more to come there.

19:49Molly Innes: Yeah really interesting what you're saying there around the different partnerships too. I wonder if there's a link there obviously we mentioned before around you know you spent a lot of your career at Adidas and you know you went on to Allbirds. are there sort of key lessons and it doesn't necessarily you know not just relate to sports sponsorship but you know sports but also marketing in general and brand growth that kind of thing like key lessons I'm sure there were so many lessons obviously but things that you've really carried through to Stanley and sort of just in sort of your mindset around around brand well

20:23Kate Ridley: Oh, certainly. I spent 22 years of my career at Adidas and 22 wonderful years. And for a long time, I worked on the lifestyle area of the business, the originals area. This is a long time ago. It's just like, gosh, 2008, 2009. But it really was the early days of brands collaborating with individuals beyond the sports area. And so I think we were at the forefront of a lot of that work of collaborating and partnering with musicians, with artists, in some cases with celebrities. And it taught me a lot about how to partner, not necessarily from a business perspective, but really from a human perspective.

21:18Kate Ridley: it's all about the relationship that you develop and being able to see from the other person's viewpoint you know what's important to them and how can you respect and and embody what's really important to them and how can they respect and embody what's important to your brand I worked with a phenomenal phenomenal brand leader who brought to Addy this concept of open source and the concept was really focused on being humble and recognizing that you don't have all the answers you don't have the keys to unlock everything even if you are a 20 billion euro brand that humility is the basis for really really strong partnerships and so I would say that's something that I really do take into the way that I work now not just with partners but probably with teammates media partners that that's like the foundation of really strong partnerships the other thing that i would say has been really a great learning and something i'm very passionate about in my career is just respecting and nurturing the heritage of a brand um definitely you know that's extremely important at a brand like adidas and um stanley 1913 is is the same it's in the name you know we are the only brand in our space that has that level of authenticity, legacy, heritage, and just making that very core to the work that we do every day across all functions and making sure that we respect that and we're using it as a platform to go forward into innovation and creativity and modernity.

23:00Kate Ridley: I would say they're the two things that have been the most valuable to me in my career are working in this space.

23:06Molly Innes: I love that and it reminds me of I think what you said you spoke to my colleague Amrit last year and there was a line around you know it's a brand with heritage it's not necessarily a heritage brand sort of positioning of it there and I think you know you can so easily see those parallels. I was going to ask as well and I know we've touched on this so maybe I'm moving us around quite a lot here but going back to the I guess you know increased investment in brand building in the creative side in sort of in that world we write a lot about brands over investing in performance channels and then having to maybe retract on that or brands you know not prioritizing brand and you know all those sort of debates which are always they're always ongoing these things are always changing but could you talk us through why the sort of increase in that area why it's important not just for for brands and growth but I guess

24:03Kate Ridley: marketing and brand building on a whole too absolutely and Stanley's probably were like a rare beast that I would say over the past couple of years we've been on a journey to increase and focus on actually focus on our performance marketing and product marketing because so much of our energy and investment was in really brand building. So that's a capability that we've been really focusing on how can we be better in this space. But at the same time, we have very clear thresholds of how we invest and what energy we put behind brand marketing. And we actually don't have any real struggles of maintaining that, to be honest, which I think is a very rare position to be in today because the like drug of performance marketing is so difficult to to get off of but we've got a good balance there I think we're really focused in the U.S.

25:03Kate Ridley: at the moment on kind of holding that line how can we make sure that we are bringing humor and creativity into our brand storytelling that can be really I don't know like fun and distinct because our space and you know this from looking at our competitive set it's really really saturated in the areas of outdoors or wellness and so when you put a lot of like if you looked at the social grid or output of a lot of hydration brands or brands in our space it's quite difficult to tell them apart and therefore you become an exchangeable commodity and that's something that we're really focused on not allowing that to happen because we are a premium brand we have extremely high levels of quality that i mean once you use a stanley product you know um why it has the reputation it has because the products are just unparalleled so it's really important that we stand out and we're distinct and we also know that like consumers just expect more that you know we all get fed so much crap every minute regardless of what channel you're looking at so we put we do put a lot of energy and passion into how do we stand out creatively how are we creating a distinct brand it's not really a huge topic for us of how to balance performance and brand we're very committed

26:30Molly Innes: to it when you're talking about the competitive set there it reminded me of something that came up a couple of months ago around um the conversation on sustainability and recycling and you know recycled metal for the products and so on could you talk to us about I guess about the sustainability element obviously you know it's something many people be aware of maybe others less so and you know sustainability as a topic seems you know it had that massive spike where everyone was talking about you know everything to do with that and then people you know they kind of went down again as so many of these things do but obviously you've maintained that commitment over a really long time could you tell us a little bit more about that and why it's important I mean, we all know sustainability is important, but lots of brands seem to forget that.

27:15Kate Ridley: It's a core brand truth for Stanley. We only have four and sustainability is one of them. So it's elevated to the very highest level at Stanley. And if you were to do a comparison of Stanley's commitment against our competitive set, you would see that we're also unparalleled in that space. And there's kind of three main areas that you can really talk about with Stanley. First of all, we are kind of by nature a sustainable product. And so we have a key commitment to reduce single-use containers. And whether that's water bottles or disposable coffee cups, we really want to focus on that. Secondly, it's about materials.

28:00Kate Ridley: We do use recycled stainless steel predominantly. exponentially is a very, very high rate in our products. And no one in our competitive space comes close to how much recycled stainless steel we use, but we also use, you know, recycled nylon and sustainable products across all of our portfolio. And then the third area that I think is also we're leading the pack is in our approach to circularity. So we launched more than a year ago our take back program in the US and imminently launching that in Europe so giving people the opportunity if they want to return a product that you know it's gone through its life cycle for them then we take it back we make a donation to the Ocean Conservancy and we also incentivize them to come back and and buy another product with Stanley and so in our space we're really leading that field and it comes from ensuring that it's a brand truth that everybody is committed to.

29:00Kate Ridley: It's a non-negotiable.

29:01Molly Innes: I was going to end on a question around going back to what we spoke about at the start. You were speaking about building out the global marketing function, the different roles and capability that you're looking for. But when you look at, I guess, marketing and advertising today as sort of a wide spectrum, are there any, I guess, traits or qualities or things for any marketers earlier on in their career listening anything like that what are the things you look for or what do you think makes a good effective marketer today uh well I think we're all

29:35Kate Ridley: non-stop talking about what influence technology has on our space and I know this is not a unique answer probably everybody says this but it means that creativity and ideas have to be stack ranked much much higher than they might have been five years ago and yeah looking for people who are bold creatively bold who are willing to take a risk with out-of-the-box ideas becomes much more important it's it's really important because we can ask claude or you know we can ask for a marketing strategy and we'll get delivered something that's like probably pretty reasonable but what really makes you stop and pay attention and and be interested in a brand or a product is something that's much more nuanced and much more human and yeah so I would say it's it's a lot of like bold ideas being willing to take a risk and put put your ideas and elevate creativity

30:40Molly Innes: is really really important that feels like the perfect place to end thank you Kate so much for coming onto the podcast.

30:48Kate Ridley: Of course. Thanks, Molly. It was so great to see you again.