2020’s Creative Campaigns #1 – Build Your Own Baby Yoda

It’s a new year, a whole new decade even, and that means that the clock has been reset on the Creative Campaigns of the year that I write about. Amid a myriad of brilliantly creative marketing stunts last year, I managed to handpick and write about 20 in total. Starting with the iconic ‘Greggs Vegan Sausage Roll‘ and ending with the witty ‘Whopper Hides A Big Mac‘. This year, I plan to come back bigger and better – promising myself that I’ll put aside more time for blogging this year.

To kick things off, we’re 15 days into the year and the first thing to really catch my eye is a story I came across on Facebook that you can now buy your own baby Yoda. Birthed from the Star Wars franchise, baby Yoda (or otherwise known as “The Child”) is a character from the Star Wars Disney+ original television series The Mandalorian. Even for those like myself who have no real interest in Star Wars whatsoever, “The Child” is seriously cute and has been a big hit on social media – becoming one of the most popular memes of late 2019.

So, it was only a matter of time before a brand other than Disney jumped on the trend and capitalised on baby Yoda’s success. It just so happens than that brand was no other than Build-A-Bear, a company who really know how to retain and expand their audience.

Introducing: Build-A-Baby-Yoda

As quite rightly put by Carrie Rose earlier, “build a bear could have died out years ago”. But, thanks to their “relevant product designs” and “jumping on new trends” their stores are packed full. I couldn’t agree with Carrie more.

Typically, bricks and mortar stores aren’t doing all that well at the moment; completely alienated in a world where Amazon and other e-commerce giants exist. However, Build-A-Bear relies on its footfall. The concept doesn’t work if they were to sell online. They sell an experience as well as the product, and by keeping that experience fresh and relatable, they’re still doing fantastic all these years on.

This is echoed by their current domination of the SERP (search engine results page) for ‘baby yoda’, which by the way, has steadily risen in searches by over 5000% in the past 90 days. Awesome brand exposure to say the very least.

Making full use of their recent media exposure, Build-A-Bear took to Twitter to harness the opportunity to plug their product update newsletter, and good for them. The replies to the tweet show just how popular their latest product announcement has proven, and I’m sure this is foreshadowing the uplift in sales and footfall that they’ll enjoy.

While there’s no product page as of yet (goodbye, links 😭) the brand can certainly be proud of the widespread national and international coverage they’ve attracted. Pretty much every publication you can think of, from red top to niche, has covered this one.

What do you think of this neat little move by Build-A-Bear? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter.