A deep-dive case study on how Away built a $10M luggage brand in its first year through PR, partnerships, influencers, and brand marketing instead of pure performance ads. Lessons for founders and growth leaders on building demand, identity, and long-term brand equity.
This nails why performance marketing alone fails in commoditized markets. The packyourbag.co hack was brilliant, turning a suitcase into a lifestyle container. What really stands out is weaponizing editor incentives by driving traffic to their articles, creating editorial dependency for future free coverage. I tried something similiar with a local outlet last year and the second placement was way easier. Surprising they didnt track influencer ROI, seems risky but the brand halo probly justified it.
Thank you so much for sharing these takeaways. They preferred not to spoil the authenticity of influencers posts with a voucher code just to track the ROI. They were so successful that they didn't need to do that.
They knew how to blend "Branding as Entertainment" throughout their journey and customer service is such an under looked, cost effective and easy way to get brand advocates - glad they used that too!
Will be interesting to decode why they weren't able to replicate the success globally, was the branding too Amercian?
This nails why performance marketing alone fails in commoditized markets. The packyourbag.co hack was brilliant, turning a suitcase into a lifestyle container. What really stands out is weaponizing editor incentives by driving traffic to their articles, creating editorial dependency for future free coverage. I tried something similiar with a local outlet last year and the second placement was way easier. Surprising they didnt track influencer ROI, seems risky but the brand halo probly justified it.
Thank you so much for sharing these takeaways. They preferred not to spoil the authenticity of influencers posts with a voucher code just to track the ROI. They were so successful that they didn't need to do that.
They knew how to blend "Branding as Entertainment" throughout their journey and customer service is such an under looked, cost effective and easy way to get brand advocates - glad they used that too!
Will be interesting to decode why they weren't able to replicate the success globally, was the branding too Amercian?
Amazing read, Enrico! I learned a lot from this. Thanks for sharing 🙌