Stanley hype and Samba cringe: Why products fall in and out of style
Do I really want the Stanley cup? Or do I want it because everyone else wants it?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Once corporate dads became the mediator, stylish customers and football fans looked elsewhere.
How did Samba get on the shoes of models in the first place?
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