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Calm · B2C · sleep and meditation app

Partner with a sports superstar to promote a sleep app

Most expensive and worst-performing campaign, per a former employee

Failedinfluencerpartnerships

What they did

Calm partnered with LeBron James as part of its celebrity partnerships.

What happened

Per a former Calm employee: most expensive and worst-performing campaign, because his fans care about basketball, not sleep.

In their words

How To Repurpose Offline Events Into Millions Of Online Impressions – Larissa Morimoto, PhotoRoom

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David BarnardAnd so it is funny that by hiring a comedian, you got a lot of attention and it's great to brainstorm ways to get that kind of attention, but that you do still need to figure out the scope of that attention and figure out ways to lean it toward people who are actually going to care and people who are going to engage with PhotoRoom.

Larissa MorimotoFor sure. I was talking to somebody who used to work at Calm, and Calm did a lot of celebrity partnerships back in the days. I think they still do today. And I remember asking them like, "Oh, but you partnered with LeBron James. That was so cool." And they were like, "Yeah, we did. But actually that ended up being our most expensive campaign and our worst performing campaign because LeBron James' audience actually does not care about getting better sleep. They care about basketball." But that was a huge learning as well. And I think I wish I had heard that before the Kamuri campaign came out. Yeah,

David BarnardThat's such a great example. Well, this has been so much fun. As we wrap up, anything you wanted to shout out, any job openings on your team or anything like that?

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Tags: celebrity, audience-fit