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BrandBreakdowns - Edition #003 - 12/08/2023

WWW.THEOODIE.COM

One brand that has always captured my attention & astounded me was The Oodie. Widely publicized & documented by the founder Davie Fogarty, I'm sure you have heard of it too. In this edition of BrandBreakdowns, we will be deep diving into The Oodie & breaking down all of the unique things they have done to grow their business in Australia & in the USA.

INTERNAL ASSET REVIEW:

The Oodie is originally a blanket shaped as an oversized hoodie, allowing you to wear a blanket portably. Solving the problem of needing to remove your blanket to take a piss or refill your water during a movie. They initially captured attention with their unique product, appealing designs & have since introduced many new product lines & have some very impressive collaborations.

They also offer Maternity Oodies, Loungewear, PJ’s, Outdoor Oodies, Kids Oodies, Robes, Blankets, Socks, Bags, Shoes & even Dog Oodies. With their expanding product line, it seems as if they are on a mission to not only provide the comfiest wearable blankets, but possibly the comfiest everything. Which is a smooth transition into targeting a larger market to scale.

Their pricing & discounts are very standard, however they have received lots of backlash for their premium pricing comparative to their large competitors. The Oodie stands behind their pricing as they have a higher quality product, of course.

It could be they are trying to move stock they are no longer advertising, or it could be a nod to their loyal returning customers, offering what appears to be 70%+ off of certain products in their clearance collection. Due to the lack of reviews of the products in the clearance section, I believe these are products that just haven't sold too well & they are trying to unload stock. Good for the customers, regardless!

Oodie has made incredible efforts putting together some really amazing bundles to encourage their customers to spend more money, ultimately increasing their AOV. We have used bundles to make a ton of extra money before & the Oodie has been one of the most creative bundlers we have seen.

Of course they have the family pack, and mega pack. What surprised me was the Twin Pack bundle for friends, siblings or literal twins. Another fun one that was well done is the adult & dog Oodie bundle, including an adult Oodie & a dog Oodie to match your furry loved one.

These are some great examples of how you can offer bundles to increase AOV & offer a fun buying experience for your customers (while increasing LTV).

One MAJOR thing The Oodie is well known for doing is collaborating with massive brands such as Marvel, Disney, Barbie, Pokemon & more! Doing this gives them massive credibility & social proof that they can use in their ads and marketing to push huge numbers. I’m not sure the specifics, but every time I’ve run anything using a big box retailer's brand name it always gets 5X-10X the ROAS of something that’s not branded. We also do not know what The Oodie is paying for these collaborations, but I am sure it is worth it. In the credibility & brand image department alone it is probably worth it.

The Oodie’s website is pretty straightforward. On BrandBreakdowns we like to only focus on things that brands do differently. Things that you can only find here, & test directly in your business. With that being said, there’s a few things The Oodie website does that I think are noteworthy.

Number 1 is they insert banners in their collections to advertise to their customers as they are scrolling through their products. I thought this was unique, and of course it changes with different offers & throughout the seasons.

Number 2 is their Comfort Promise. An entire page (with main menu real estate) dedicated to their 30 day happiness guarantee. It proves that our mission & guarantees are important enough to warrant their own page.

They also have different websites for different countries. When visiting the Australian website from the USA, you are prompted to visit the USA website. I have seen this before, smart for logistics on the back end but also feels very professional from the consumers perspective. This also protects The Oodie from the price differences between AUD & USD. Both use the $ symbol, so if a USD customer is on the AUD website, things will look more expensive than they really are.

www.theoodie.com  

Us.theoodie.com 

ToastyTek is the name they created for the fleece they use on the exterior of their Oodies. Coining your own terms to describe a material or technology used in your product is a great tactic for increasing perceived value & uniqueness in your product.

EXTERNAL MARKETING REVIEW:

Normally on BrandBreakdowns we will give you the top headline used in META ads, but this time we can’t. The Oodie has done such an incredible job testing different ad copies & headlines, you are just going to have to see for yourself how many there are. Another awesome thing to see is that they are running ads using different languages in their ad copy. Which is something we have not yet seen with a BrandBreakdown brand.

While browsing the web & doing general research for this brand, I stumbled upon a website called wearableblankets.co, I rightfully assumed it was a competitor of The Oodie & clicked on it. Low & behold, it is actually an advertorial website for The Oodie. You can see by the disclaimer on the bottom that the entire thing is just an ad. Now I do not know how well this performed or if it was worth doing, but I do find it very interesting that this exists & that it is still active & ranking for certain SEO terms.

I have also stumbled upon The Oodies Pinterest page. Getting a whopping 175,000 views on their profile & consistently posting Pins. I have done quite well on Pinterest with home decor & other products that are sellable through images alone. I am sure it is doing quite well for them!

Take 10 minutes right now & head over to The Oodies Youtube Channel where you can see all of the Youtube ads that they have ran. Due to the millions of views, I’d reckon they did quite well. Unlike the BrandBreakdowns we did on TrySnow, The Oodie has multiple Youtube Ads with millions of views.

INTERNAL MARKETING REVIEW:

The Oodie is taking initiative to grow their community by calling them the #oodiesquad. They are mentioning this on all of their sales letters, ad copy & primary Instagram page. They also make an Instagram account dedicated to @oodiesquad 

Naming your “cult” is a concept that was pushed heavy by Russel Brunson & many other industry leaders. Russels huge success in the #funnelhacker community stands as testimony to how powerful this marketing strategy can be!

The “Oodies Everywhere” Facebook Group is an impressive community of Oodie collectors showing off their collections. I saw countless people posting about owning 10+ Oodies, Oodie’s for their whole family, all of their pets etc.. It is crazy to see they have cultivated a community around a wearable blanket. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken on starting a community just to hear the excuse of “Our product doesn’t make sense for a community”. Oodie has proved you wrong, if there can be a community for a blanket, there can be a community for anything!

Now for my favorite part of BrandBreakdowns, becoming a customer of The Oodie & documenting the entire experience.

Unfortunately, BrandBreakdowns is meant to only show off the unique & different things that brands do to grow. The Oodie’s entire sales process is as standard as it gets. There were no special upsells, not even a countdown timer. I clicked add to cart, it brought me to the Shopify cart. I clicked checkout & it took me to Shopify's one page checkout. Simple. Easy. The thank you page was even the default Shopify thank you page, but it did have a survey asking how I heard about them.

24 hours after purchasing I received an email with about 5 links to video tutorials for the Oodie product. How to wrap it as a gift, how to wash it, how to fold it, etc.

I have seen brands do these types of “Educational Content” types of emails before, (we JUST saw it with the TrySnow BrandBreakdown). But instead of doing a blog, The Oodie has straight up linked Vimeo videos in their email. I have not found these videos linked anywhere else on their website, either. It’s almost like a “Oodie Starter Kit”, giving more value to their customers after buying.

This is one of the videos.

I received The Oodie 5 days after purchasing it. It was packaged very well, came in a bag that said “I have a feeling we are going to become best friends” on it. Inside of the package, The Oodie was in a cloth bag with Oodie branding on it. Inside was The Oodie vacuum sealed with a letter stating that it will fluff up in seconds upon removal. Overall, incredible product experience & I love how The Oodie includes a travel bag with the Oodie.