There are some who would argue that charging $100 for yoga pants requires at least a touch of disdain for your target market. But a new online ad from Lululemon Athletica Inc. raises the issue again: does the retailer think its core customers are full of it?
The Vancouver-based company, which built its brand selling high-end workout wear to yoga fanatics, has released a satirical video on YouTube mocking the yoga practitioners that are the chain’s bread and butter.
The video, called Sh*t Yogis Say, is just one of a cavalcade of online videos riffing on the Web comedy hit Sh*t Girls Say – a short series featuring a man in drag saying uncomfortably familiar phrases such as “Could you do me a huge favour?” and “Get these chips away from me!”
In the Lululemon version, a smug “yogi” hugging a branded mat proselytizes about carrot sticks being “nature’s candy,” and for some of us, conjures the ghosts of hippie roommates past with the declaration, “It feels like a full moon.”
It’s a strong departure from Lululemon’s typical brand image. While the company is far from humourless – it sells a bra named the “Ta-ta Tamer” – its overall messaging is almost oppressively earnest. Its earth-friendly shopping bags are covered in adages on how to live life better. Its YouTube channel is more known for videos with bouncy titles such as “Let’s Talk Pants,” than for comedy.
But the risky move of poking fun at the same people it courts as customers seems to have paid off: The video has ricocheted around social media this past week and will almost certainly have reached one million views on YouTube by the time you read this. In the marketing world, one million is the benchmark for viral success. Only 4 per cent of those who rated the video on YouTube clicked “dislike” – it has racked up more than 4,000 “likes.”
“There’s a good chance this video will far surpass [1 million views]. That’s when it will be important for marketers to look at, for ROI [return on investment],” said Simon Davies, president of Toronto-based firm MThirty, which specializes in social media marketing. “It’s a pretty brave manoeuvre … I kind of like it when a brand pokes fun like that, at their consumers.”
Lululemon is not the only brand to brave the waters of gentle mockery – the online space has opened up possibilities for this kind of humour in other cases. In 2010, Toyota Motor Corp. scored a viral hit with its “Swagger Wagon” campaign, which featured a yuppie couple rapping about their slick ride (a minivan) and displaying a discernible lack of street cred.
“The whole campaign, we had to be very careful about making sure the humour got close to the line but didn’t cross,” said Bob Zeinstra, national manager of advertising and strategic planning with Toyota in the U.S. The campaign was designed to use humour to re-position the minivan from a product parents need, to something they might actually want.
“It did great things for Toyota, too, in showing we’re a contemporary, energetic, progressive company. We’re not afraid to have some fun.”
Like Lululemon, Toyota picked up on an existing discussion bouncing around social media – in that case, the chatter on Facebook and Twitter around its 30-second TV spot. That ad featured the same couple (minus the beat-dropping), in which the female actress casually joked that her husband called their Sienna minivan the “swagger wagon.”
“People kept using the term,” Mr. Zeinstra said. “We decided to then leverage that, and we went back and created a new production. … What it taught us, is you have to be ready to drop whatever you think is important, and jump on something that has a lot of energy within the social space.”
