The sale
of a 40-ounce Stanley bottle, the Quencher, is a story of spectacular marketing success that combines an old brand, a new marketing platform, and the creation of a viral cultural moment. The 110-year-old brand is known for making “rugged,” reliable, high-quality container products favored by men (the original target consumers were WW II pilots) who work or spend time outdoors, to being candy-colored trendy-setting mugs fanatically sought out by an entirely new demographic of women and teenagers.
Creation of Stanley’s culturally viral moment is spearheaded by Terence Reilly, who joined Stanley as the company President in 2020 after a successful five-year run as the Chief Marketing Officer of Crocs, another brand whose main product went from “weird and unfashionable” to “of-the-moment” cool under his leadership.
How did Reilly identify the marketing opportunities? In addition to his marketing insights and experience, he employed superb leadership skills, including learning and listening. A common pitfall of a new or emerging leader is that they believe they need to come up with all the great ideas. This belief cannot be further from the truth. Teams, especially diverse teams (of backgrounds, roles, functions, and levels), invaluably contribute to opportunity identification and execution improvement. Below are three critical lessons from Reilly’s leadership style that led to Stanley’s success:
Lesson 1: Lead with a learning mindset and behavior
Upon joining Stanley, Terence Reilly prioritized listening to and learning from the current team about what was working and what was not. Reilly dedicated the first days of his job to learning as much as he could from the employees by interviewing them. In one of the conversations, he got the idea for leveraging Stanley Quencher evangelists from a sales associate. The sales associates informed Reilly of how The Buy Guide co-founder Ashlee LeSueur, had been trying to get management to notice the popularity of the Stanley quencher among a community of women in Utah. Still, the idea only took off when Terence Reilly walked in and started paying attention to the colleagues without putting his agenda first.
Learning first is the best mindset for executives joining a new company and any employee entering a new role or project. The best way to create buy-in on your idea is by making others feel heard, involved, and considered, and this starts with listening.
Lesson 2: Listen from every level
Terence Reilly didn’t just solicit feedback from his direct reports or Crocs’s most senior function heads. He encouraged and fostered a culture of sharing ideas at all levels. Empowered by the openness to ideas, intern Toria Roth approached Reilly with information that Post Malone is a big fan of Crocs. Crocs went on to partner with Post Malone, a collab that catapulted Crocs to the mainstream consciousness, which led to future successful collaborations.
The opinions and suggestions of the employees directly involved in the execution process are often overlooked or ignored. Management’s priorities are not always well articulated, and the junior employees feel they need more agency to escalate their opinions. The success of the TV show Undercover Boss portrays how rare and captivating it is to watch a CEO discover the day-to-day challenges and opportunities that front-line employees witness. Review your calendar and interactions: deliberately make room to meet with employees across functions and levels. More importantly, champion the environment where other managers empower their teams to put their ideas forward and upward.
Lesson 3: Give credit
In every interview Terence Reilly does about his success at Crocs and Stanley, he mentions the employees who gave him the idea, referring to them as “brilliant.” Being a leader does not mean you have to generate every thought, but that you know how to turn them into a winning strategy. This starts with employees wanting to share their ideas with you because they feel safe doing so, and you will adequately recognize their contribution.