Everyone’s talking about the Stanley cup. Not the hockey trophy — the brand of $50 water bottles that went from $70M sales to $750M in the past few years after becoming a TikTok sensation. I don’t really get the Stanley hype. But it might be too late for me, as the brand has gotten so popular so fast as to be declared ‘over’ in 2024:

The cups are “on their way out. This is peak Stanley. There’s no up from here.”
- Casey Lewis, Business Insider

The Adidas Samba shoe is another product that achieved viral popularity over the past few years. The sneaker became a favorite of models like Bella Hadid and Hailey Bieber, resulting in a situation where the shoes were both everywhere and unable to be bought as they sold out as soon as they came back in stock.
Sambas spotted on and Hailey Bieber, Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid. Image sources: Getty, Author
Despite the Samba’s popularity, last weekend one of my more stylish friends referred to wearing Sambas as cringe:

“Every girl in New York is wearing [Sambas]… it just doesn’t feel cool anymore.”

I couldn’t help but agree.

What’s happening here?

Part of it is the natural cycle of fashion. Products get popular, and then they fall out of style. But why do products reach a tipping point and fall out of style?
That part can be explained by René Girard’s theory of Mimetic Desire. Mimetic Desire is the idea that we don’t want what we want, we desire what others want. Specifically others of status. This isn’t anything revolutionary. It’s true in dating (if someone high-status thinks someone else is attractive, you may also find that person more attractive). It happens in careers (many students enter their MBA wanting different things, only to converge on a small set of career options desired by the rest of their class by the time they graduate). And it’s why celebrity partnerships work. These aren’t just a pair of sneakers. Those are Michael Jordan’s sneakers.

Mimetic Desire came up in HBO’s The White Lotus. Source: Youtube/HBO
A key in marketing is selecting the right mediator. The mediator is the person whose desire influences others’. In today’s words: an influencer. PR firms are known for getting products on celebrities to build desire for products. But celebrities are pricey. Another strategy? Go a step further back: Don’t influence the celebrity who influences your customer; influence the mediator who influences the celebrity who influences your customer.
Two influencer strategies. One takes longer. One is cheaper. Source: Michelle Wiles
For example, at a talk at Advertising Week, the Head of Marketing for recovery slide OOFOs mentioned that their ideal mediator is an athlete — say an NBA player. But instead of influencing the NBA player (those partnerships are expensive), they influence the physical therapists, coaches, and doctors around the players.

But, mediators can also work in reverse.

Samba became popular by getting on the feet of it-girl mediators like Hailey Bieber. But as the brand became the shoe that everyone was wearing, the mediator shifted from fashionista to, well, everyone. The status of the mediator went down. As my friend mentioned: who wants to look like everyone else?
Another friend was more cutting: Every girl dresses the same: Samba sneakers, Aritzia blazer, it’s like bro can you have a personality?
With Mimetic Desire, status matters. Looking like you are mediated by the fashion elite? That’s cool, you’re one of them now. Looking like you are mediated by everybody? Less cool.
The funny thing? Samba has been through this cycle of cool to too popular before.
Source: Michelle Wiles
According to Hypebeast, the Samba was created in 1950 to help footballers maintain stability on icy football fields, with three cut-out suction cups to provide players with traction. The Samba design we know today was launched in 1972, and in the ’70s the Samba was a major hit among football fans (who were perhaps mediated by professional footballers who wore the shoe).
In the 1990s, the Samba achieved pop culture icon status when it was spotted on the band Oasis, and in the movie Trainspotting (Source: VOGUE). But, with pop culture popularity came audience expansion. And with the expansion came the inevitable a decline in coolness:

By the ’90s and early 2000s [Samba] was the shoe to wear for indoor soccer…. But a few years in, the shoe’s massive popularity somewhat backfired. It soon became a go-to for dads and men with nine-to-five jobs who weren’t necessarily known for having sought-after style. Now that was enough — for girls and guys going through puberty and trying desperately to be cool — to make the shoe decisively uncool.
— Harper’s Bazaar

Once corporate dads became the mediator, stylish customers and football fans looked elsewhere.

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How did Samba get on the shoes of models in the first place?

Like OOFOs, Samba mediated the mediator, by building hype and status within the community that it-girl models are in — the fashion insider community. According to HBX, Adidas began to plan out the Samba resurgence in 2020. They partnered with upcoming British Designer Grace Wales Bonner, to launch a limited-edition Samba that resonated with the fashion community. The shoe immediately sold out, causing bidding wars on resale sites like StockX and GOAT. A brand that is selling for thousands more than its original price can only mean one thing: this brand is highly desired.
​​Adidas continued the collaborations, partnering with Kith, Palace, and IRAK, which furthered the hype. Soon, owning a pair of Sambas showed that you were early to a trend (high status) and could afford or have access to said trend (also high status).
Adidas also chose smart timing to bring the Samba back. Fashion tends to run on a 20-year trend cycle. I’d guess it’s no coincidence that Adidas hired a trending fashion designer to refresh a shoe to the fashion community ~20 years after it went out of style.

Stanley’s President Terence Reilly did something similar: He influenced the influencers.

Stanley was a thermos brand that marketed to workmen and blue collar workers. But the founders of The Buy Guide, an online shopping blog and Instagram account targeting women, recommended the Stanley Quencher to their audience, who bought thousands. The sales influence of The Buy Guide was enough for Stanley to shift its strategy and start marketing more to women. Reilly introduced affiliate and influencer channels, which allowed women to mediate to other women on a large scale, and sales took off.
The problem is — what happens now? Stanley is likely earning great margins. But the brand is at another inflection — without new innovation, the brand is so popular that it risks losing status. Interestingly, last week Stanley’s competitor Simple Modern announced a rebrand coming in 2024. It seems others think that the water bottle category is primed for a new status leader to emerge.

How can your brand get on the cycle?

It’s become standard to look to social media to identify influencers to sell products: Who has the following we want? And who fits our ~brand~? But influencers are a crowded market. Anyone with significant following is bound to be expensive.
Instead, take a tip from Stanley — start with your customers — who is influencing them already? Be open to identifying partnerships that don’t fit the customer persona that’s in your mind.
Once you have identified your mediators (influencers of your customer base), take a tip from Adidas and OOFOs — consider who influences those mediators. Who works with them? Whose career do they want to emulate? Who do they trust? Who is high status in their eyes?
Finally — stay fresh. As much as Mimetic Desire is a part of human nature, admitting you are prone to it is not. No one wants to feel like their decisions are the result of trying to look like someone else. Limited editions and stock-outs can lengthen the amount of time a brand stays in the sun.
And, if the plan goes too well and you get too popular, well, there’s always waiting until the trend cycle repeats in 20 years…

What do you think? Can Stanley and Samba stay atop of the trend cycle?

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