Ridge partnered with Tony Hawk for its 6th annual sweepstakes + gave away over $500k in prizes.
50% YoY growth; 8-figure campaign.
But this isn’t a flex. Instead …
🤑 Connor MacDonald answers 5 questions to help you launch your own
🥸 Cody Plofker reveals how Jones Road took down +1,600 counterfeits
😯 Sean Frank explains why email is unc and how it is (finally) getting fixed
Plus, the top five headlines in consumer.
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Cody Plofker
Advisor, Jones Road
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How We Eliminated Counterfeit Brands at Jones Road
I’ve always seen copycat brands as a sign you’re doing something right. But they can also be a big problem.
At Jones Road, it got so bad that fake websites were running paid ads to appear at the top of Google for our branded search.
During peak sales periods, they’d promise free shipping + steal from our customers. Our support team would get flooded with hundreds of tickets. Here’s one of those fake sites.
To solve it, we reached out to Podqi and within six months, they had resolved 1,613 infringements, including:
- 318 fake Shopify domains
- 246 copycat websites
- 276 Amazon listings
- 178 eBay counterfeits
Most of that happened in the first week. Our response times dropped from two weeks to 3-4 days.
These are just a few copycat domains they removed.
I highly recommend them.
Podqi holds trusted-reporter status on hundreds of platforms with a 98% success rate. Plus, repeat offenders are linked across channels, so a seller pulled from Amazon can’t relaunch on TikTok Shop.
New Podqi customers average 2,000+ takedowns in two weeks.
Want to find and eliminate your brands’ copycats?
Start by having Podqi scan the web for your brand name. It only takes 90 seconds. Then book a free demo with their team to learn more about how they can help.
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Connor MacDonald
CMO, Ridge
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Tony Hawk x Ridge: 5 Q&As From 6 Years of Sweepstakes
Sweepstakes is one of our fastest-growing campaigns at Ridge.
Our first was scrappy. Sean and I drove a Jeep out to the desert, shot some content, and a few weeks later chose a winner.
This year, we partnered with Tony Hawk and gave away over half a million dollars in prizes.
It was our first multi-eight-figure sweeps campaign.
We drove roughly 50% revenue growth YoY at a better MER.
Here are my answers to five of the most common questions I get.
1️⃣ When should you run it?
2️⃣ What should you give away?
3️⃣ Who should you partner with?
4️⃣ Why should’t you discount?
5️⃣ How should you measure it?
1. When should you run it?
Ridge has a natural gap in its calendar.
Our anniversary sale gives us a big moment in March. Father’s Day carries May and June. Holiday gives us Q4.
Late July and August don’t give people much of a seasonal reason to buy a wallet. Back-to-school isn’t particularly relevant for Ridge.
Our revenue arc looks something like this.
We wanted to create a tentpole that could support Q3. And sweepstakes has become our fourth major annual campaign.
If you’re thinking about running one, my advice is to find the period that’s a natural low for your category and use it to manufacture demand.
2. What should you give away?
Short answer: Something people will talk about.
Sweepstakes only work if people care about the prize. Every year, we try to make ours harder to ignore.
After the Jeep, we gave away Hennessy Velociraptors, heavily modified F-150s. Then we offered a choice between a Velociraptor and a 24-karat gold-plated Cybertruck.
People argued in the comments about which one they’d pick.
The prize doesn’t need to be tied to your product. It only needs to capture people’s attention.
Cars are great because they hold value. When a winner wants cash, we can resell the car or reuse it in a future campaign.
No one wanted the gold Cybertruck. So we auctioned it for charity on Doug DeMuro’s channel.
3. Who should you partner with?
This year, we wanted a face for the campaign.
In January, we started talking to a bunch of talent agencies (UTA, CAA, WME) about athletes, models, and actors.
We landed on Tony Hawk. He fits our customer, he’s been doing more commercial work, and he was a Ridge customer.
The campaign was six weeks.
We got a shoot day, his name and likeness for the campaign, whitelisting, and two social posts. We didn’t sign him for distribution.
We shot at his warehouse, in front of his halfpipe, with his production company.
Then we made him the face of sweeps everywhere.
- Homepage
- Landers
- Emails
- Social
- TV
My biggest fear was that we’d finish the campaign unable to tell if the collab was worth it.
Instead, we found multiple clear wins.
We scaled TV spend +71% YoY (the gold row below) at roughly half last year’s in-platform CPA. This is largely from stronger response rates.
Similarly, TikTok (the black row) had the largest YoY % of budget increase, from 4.1% to 9.1%, as we basically doubled our investment in GMV Max.
Creators posted 5,269 videos on TikTok during the campaign.
Not every celebrity will do that. But the right person for the right brand can create massive leverage.
4. Why should’t you discount?
Sweepstakes is largely a full-price period for us. The prize does the work a discount usually does.
People can enter for free by giving us their email and they can get additional entries by purchasing our products.
Across all our sweepstakes, two winners have entered without purchasing anything.
That’s a feature, not a bug.
Most of the year, we’re spending Meta dollars to tell people to come to Ridge.com and buy something.
During sweeps, the message is all about what we are giving away. That’s the offer. Don’t dilute it.
We’ve seen partnership ads’ click-through rates increase 5x in some cases.
Of course, the traffic and email leads are less qualified.
But who cares?
The lift in opt-ins + brand visibility is massive during these campaigns and pays off for months (sometimes years) after.
Some people come for the prize, see a product they like, and buy. But it doesn’t benefit every category equally.
Wallets and tech accessories at accessible price points do the best. Wedding bands and suitcases see very little lift.
5. How should you measure it?
We’ve run sweeps six years in a row.
Comparing this year’s campaign with last year’s tells us whether it grew. It doesn’t tell us how much revenue we would have generated without it.
To answer that, here are a few comparisons that have helped us.
YoY Growth
In 2024, we moved sweeps up a week. That gave us a sweeps week against a prior-year non-sweeps week.
If it’s your first, compare your year-over-year growth during the campaign with your growth rate going into it.
If you were growing 10% YoY before launch and 40% YoY during sweeps, that jump is a rough read on the lift.
Holdout Markets
When we introduced sweeps in Canada and the UK, we compared their growth with the prior year and with markets that didn’t have the campaign.
If you only sell in one market, you can do something similar with geos. Turn off sweeps ads in some regions and compare them with the ones that got the campaign. Hold out the ads, not eligibility, to stay within official rules.
The Tail
Canada and the UK kept growing faster than our other markets even after sweeps ended.
That surprised me. Some of the benefit extended beyond the six weeks of active promotion.
So keep measuring after the campaign ends. Tag everyone who enters and track what they buy over the next few months. Many free entries convert later, often during your next big sale.
Connor told me HexClad runs their sweepstakes at the start of Q4 exactly for this reason.
None of these are clean randomized holdouts. Different markets respond differently to Tony Hawk and a Lamborghini.
But together, they give us confidence that the campaign adds demand. When you’re investing in prizes, production, and a celebrity partnership, you need to know that.
Should You Run Your Own?
Sweepstakes are now one of our biggest campaigns of the year.
But none of this requires a Lamborghini or Tony Hawk.
For your first, keep it simple.
1️⃣ Run it during your slow period
2️⃣ Pick prizes worth talking about
3️⃣ Use affiliates then influencers
4️⃣ Keep your products full price
5️⃣ Track your YoY lift during + after
We started with one Jeep and no celebrities. Then we raised the stakes every year.
If we can do it, you can do it.
Email is unc. Postscript is fixing it.
I ruined Postscript’s surprise.
But Im not sorry.
They are the good guys of SMS. Lots of innovation.
Connor talked about them for half of last week's mops episode - it was not even a sponsored ep. lol
1:1 conversations
RCS messages
AI texts & testing
Ppl wanted them to do email. It could have been a cashgrab
Just look at the response to my stunt.
They said no for eight years. That has cost them a ton of money and customers.
Nobody does that.
I respect it.
Now they are ready.
September 23 they will show us how it works. Over 30 brands already use it.
Big email should be afraid.
2027 DTC: AI Retention Marketing + TikTok Creator Burnout
3 Business Crises + The Lessons They Learned
One Month From Launch + Still Unsure
Curated by the editor of CPG Wire, the five top stories in commerce and DTC.
1. Sol-ti Secures Over $30M: Twitter
California-based wellness shot specialist Sol-ti secured an additional $30.3M in equity funding. Investors include Cambridge SPG, Charlie Walk, Connect, Grays Peak Capital, and Volchek Capital Partners.
Sol-ti is best known for its wellness shots but the company also offers functional juices and drink mixes. Wellness shots are having a moment: Bansk Group acquired So Good So You and Suja Life went public earlier this year.
2. Mars Men Expands Portfolio: PR Newswire
Mars Men, the men’s health brand co-founded by Benjamin Smith and Zach Stuck, just launched its second product. Ignite Natural Focus + Cognition Support is a daily drink mix designed to support focus, clarity, and memory.
The product is formulated with 80mg of natural caffeine and 13 cognitive actives. Mars Men raised over $27M led by L Catterton after hitting a $100M run rate in less than 18 months.
3. Wizard Wellness Raises $1M: LinkedIn
Wizard Wellness, the consumer startup reimagining allergy care, raised an additional $1M in equity funding. Pave Health Ventures and Vanquish Equity participated in the round alongside two existing investors, True Beauty Ventures and Barrier Island Capital. Beauty industry veteran Lorne Lucree launched Wizard Wellness earlier this year; it quickly eclipsed 4k retail doors.
4. Riff Officially Launches: Twitter
Renowned chef Daniel Humm partnered with Mark Ramadan, the co-founder of Sir Kensington’s, to launch Riff, a chef-crafted meal kit brand. The brand launched with 5 items and offers 20-minute meals that bridge the gap between convenience and scratch cooking.
Riff is available via DTC channels and nationwide at Target. Center, the branding agency behind BERO and several other brands, did Riff’s branding and packaging.
5. Jay Shetty Backs Sleep or Die: LinkedIn
Sleep or Die recently secured an investment from influential podcaster and author Jay Shetty. The “anti-wellness” sleep brand was founded by Lauren Sudeyko and offers a variety of sleep solutions, including its novel Sleep Strips line.
Earlier this year, Sleep or Die secured a $1M investment from True Beauty Ventures. The company will launch its second oral strip product in the near future.
With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff
🤓 Chief Executive Officer
P.S. (Disclaimer): Special thanks to Podqi and Postscript for sponsoring today’s newsletter.