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
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How To Repurpose Offline Events Into Millions Of Online Impressions – Larissa Morimoto, PhotoRoom“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.”
Related topics
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More from Calm
All 3 Calm tacticsMore from this episode
- PhotoRoom: Grow mainly through paid ads once the product clearly worksReached ~300M downloads and $50M+ ARR; later hit ad fatigue and rising CPAs
- PhotoRoom: Rent giant street screens where passersby try the app and see their photos15,000 people reached, 4M+ online views, 18% more branded search, trade press coverage
- PhotoRoom: Bring your ad makers to live events and reuse the footage in ads and posts4M+ views; TikTok-style clips did better than expected on LinkedIn
- PhotoRoom: Judge brand campaigns by brand-name searches and surveys, not cost per installFreed the team to try new channels; claim only
- PhotoRoom: Host a press-only store event with a famous comedian and a hobby brandNo branded search uplift, vs 18% in London; an expensive lesson
- PhotoRoom: Run a TikTok ambassador programWorked for a while, then stalled as everyone copied it
- PhotoRoom: Make ads for small-business owners fun and consumer-style, not businesslike
- PhotoRoom: Team up with a hit movie so users can put themselves on its set