Irresistible Marketing Example

The year: 2017. The obsession: fidget spinners.

Little colorful spinny things. That spin… and help you focus and stop fidgeting? (Maybe.) 

But for a while there, everyone had them. The office manager got them for our whole firm at a past job. I mainly used my hot pink spinner to entertain my cat.

Anyhoo, let’s talk the marketing lessons we can learn from the fidget spinner fad.

A Great Product Doesn’t Sell Itself

The thing is, fidget spinners were actually invented back in the 90s by a woman named Catherine Hettinger who wanted to make a toy that would distract and soothe kids. She sold them at fairs and hoped to get a major toy manufacturer to pick them up. Toy conglomerate Hasbro rejected the fidget spinner and, eventually, Hettinger allowed her patent to lapse in 2005 because she didn’t have enough for the renewal fee.

She probably regretted that come December 2016, when a Forbes article came out claiming that fidget spinners were the “must have” office toy of 2017- an article several have credited with helping to boost the fidget spinning fad.

James Plafke, author of the Forbes article, said most of the folks he had test out the spinners were initially incredulous about the little spinny hunk of metal, but once they tried it, they didn’t want to stop fidget spinning.

A Lot of People Have To Talk About It For It To Go Viral

Referring to fidget toys as an “innocuous outlet for your nervous or bored energy,” Plafke wrote: 

“Some of us played with the spinners instead of bit our nails and cuticles -- I went from short nails and raw skin to being able to squeeze a lemon into a glass of water with no problem. Some found we were more present in our daily lives -- fidgeting with the spinner on the subway and paying attention to our surroundings rather than burying our faces in our phones. A few of us noticed we got up from our desks less, dumping energy into fidgeting with the spinner rather than taking mindless trips to the pantry. Our engagement level with the spinners varied from tester to tester, but we all preferred having them around, and found ourselves reaching for it when we were doing things that didn't require both hands, from editing an article to simply waiting for the elevator.”

There wasn’t much in the way of research behind the mental health benefits, Plafke admitted- but he encouraged people to try one and see. Although, the little buggers could get quite pricy. Upwards of $100 for brand-name metal fidget spinners like Torqbar and Rotablade. Prices that perhaps prompted the kinda cringe Saturday Night Live skit about Cartier Fidget Spinners for distracting obnoxious rich women with anxiety who you keep around because they’re great in bed despite being extremely annoying.

Everyone Loves a Good Origin Story & Unlikely Heroes

By 2017, fidget spinners were a country-wide phenomenon in the United States. In April of that year, fidget spinners made up 17% of all online sales of toy stores, and Fidget360, a fidget spinner company founded by 2 teenagers, made $350,000 in just 6 months.

When then 17-year-old co-founder Allan Maman was searching online for a toy to help him manage his ADHD, he found a Fidget Cube- but saw it wouldn’t ship for 6 months. With some more research, he learned about fidget spinners. Folks were selling 3D-printed fidget spinners on sites like Etsy, but he couldn’t find anyone mass-producing them. So he teamed up with classmate Cooper Weiss to use their high school’s 3D printer to start mass-producing fidget spinners themselves.

And all the other kids wanted a fidget spinner too. Soon, Maman and Weiss were making around $500 a day selling fidget spinners to their classmates for $25 a pop before the threat of suspension forced them to move the operation to the basement of Weiss’s parents’ house.

They bought 8 3D printers, launched Fidget360 on Shopify, and quickly drew more than 150,000 followers to their Instagram account at the height of the fidget spinner craze. Insider reported:

"Without social media, I don't really know where we'd be right now," Weiss told INSIDER, "99% of our sales are from Instagram." When asked why he and Maman focused mostly on Instagram, compared to Facebook or Snapchat, Weiss added, "Us being teens, we use Instagram the most, and we know what all the other kids are using.

In fact, when they experimented with ads on Facebook, they had a hard time reaching their target demographic. "It was mostly parents commenting on our stuff, " Weiss said. On Instagram, however, he and Maman could link kids directly to the Fidget360 website by paying influencers and popular meme pages to do shout-outs."

Soon they drew funding and were able to expand their business to a factory in Brooklyn, NY.

YouTubers started reviewing the fidget spinner trend, with some influencers' videos amassing millions of views. Dude Perfect’s fidget spinner tricks video has 178 million views on YouTube, for instance.

Viral ≠ Long-Lived

Seemingly just as quickly as they became ubiquitous, fidget spinners faded away. When it was super easy and cheap for anyone and everyone to have fidget spinners- they lost their sparkle.

The Economist reported:

“Big toy retailers, the usual arbiters of what sells, were initially caught flat-footed. Fidget spinners were a plaything that children themselves discovered and shared on social media, particularly on YouTube and Instagram. No person or firm had a patent on spinners, so with no licensing fees to pay, anyone could make them. They are produced in huge quantities in China, often by firms that previously manufactured smartphone accessories. Others were made using 3D printing. That has been a boon for small shops, which have been able to stock these unbranded goods from wherever they can find them.”

By May 2017, publications like Vice were critiquing manufacturers for claiming fidget spinners had major mental health benefits for people with autism, ADHD, and anxiety without the research to back it up.

By June 2017, many schools across the U.S. and Europe were banning fidget spinners for being distracting at best and dangerous at worst when spinning tricks went awry.

Even the Fidget360 founders knew it was a fad. Maman told Mic in May 2017:

“I definitely don't think the fidget spinner will last into the new school year in September," he said. "There's a possibility it will spark back up at the end of the summer when kids head back to school, but right now I think it's entered its peak and it's only gonna go down."

Now, I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw someone with a fidget spinner. Can you?

Takeaways From The Tale of the Great Fidget Spinner Fad

1. Products aren’t inherently valuable or not valuable. Individuals decide stuff is valuable to them, and when enough individuals believe in that value, culture adopts the trend- or we all collectively lose interest.

2. Good marketing can make anything sell. A charming origin story with unlikely heroes certainly doesn’t hurt. A mental health benefit angle also doesn’t hurt- unless your claims are overblown. Because claims without proof make your offer less credible.

3. Bandwagons are powerful for creating viral moments. This was truly a “all the cool kids are doing it” moment.

4. But for it to be more than a moment, it needs a story beyond being trendy and it needs to be unique enough- or patented enough- not to be easily copied.

Want to create irresistible marketing that is more than a fad? Make sure to register for the upcoming free online workshop Why Nothing You've Tried For Marketing Has Worked & What To Do Instead.