Unpacking the Luxury: How Last Crumb's Brand Awareness Turned A Cookie Into a $160 Experience
Nothing is as it used to be anymore; with the way our world is changing, keeping up with the trends has a whole new meaning. I’m sure many of you are already realizing this, but in the eCommerce world, simply selling a product is just not enough anymore; you have to sell an experience. Most products are a dime a dozen these days and are easily accessible to anyone with some form of technology, so for something to really stand out now, everything has to be amazing. Standing out right now is all about the experience, and creating an experience can be done for literally everything, even cookies.
Luxury Cookies?
Can you think of any reason someone would spend one hundred and forty dollars on twelve cookies? Well, for the same reason, someone would spend thousands of dollars on a watch; Last Crumb’s cookies are being called the Rolex of cookies, and for a good reason. It is not about buying cookies with them; it is all about the experience of buying the cookies.
Last Crumb was tasked with how to make their cookie brand stand out from others like Crumbl Cookies, so they decided to center their strategy around creating a luxury cookie brand that gives the customer an experience simply through their packaging. Getting an order from Last Crumb is not only about getting the actual cookies, which do look amazing. It is really all about opening the package, which has been designed to resemble the packaging of fine wines or luxury fashion items. In three months, Last Crumb sold over one million dollars worth of cookies and has a wait list that is almost dramatically long, yet they have not spent a single dollar on marketing.
Between the cheeky names for the cookies and the luxury packaging, their customers are doing all the marketing for them. They have created such an amazing user experience that everyone who receives a package takes a video of them unboxing it and posts it online. They have made a flywheel effect for their business; the more cookies they sell, the more people post about them, which brings in even more customers. Their creative solution to sticking out was based on how their experience is different from other cookie brands rather than how the cookies themselves are different. Last Crumb is continuing to gain popularity and success all because a few influencers made videos on their amazing packaging, which caused them to go viral.
The second you go onto Last Crumb’s website, the experience begins. There is a countdown to the next drop, down to the second, on the top of the page, which is very similar to Supreme’s website, another luxury brand. This creates the feeling of exclusivity that they were going for when they created this strategy. This is all part of the premium user experience that they have created; every second a customer spends with this brand is an experience.
The Experience
Think about why you might recommend something to a friend or why you might return to a restaurant; it would probably be because you had a really good experience. Well, experiences are no longer limited to activities but have become a part of the eCommerce world too. Last Crumb is just one example of how businesses are taking advantage of this strategy. Whatever your product is, there is a way to make it stand out through the experience rather than the product itself.
The entirety of your product needs to be an experience to stick out, from the second they log on to the website until they receive the package and open it. This means their entire user experience needs to be amazing to really stand out from competitors. If you want your product to be like Last Crumb, gone are the days of a basic website and a brown box for delivery.
We all know social media is one of the current most effective tools to get people talking about your product. Influencers are not going to simply post about a product unless they are paid to do it or if the experience really blew them away. That is exactly what Last Crumb was able to achieve with their packaging, which caused their wild, instant success. Anyone can look up cookie brands online and get met with hundreds of websites, but most people will likely look it up on social media first to find the best ones. If they see hundreds of posts about the same brand, that is probably the one they are going to try out, and those posts get created because of the experience, not the product itself.
Products simply are not enough anymore in the eCommerce world; the entire experience needs to be just right for a brand to truly stick out and take off even a fraction of the way Last Crumb did. If it can be done for cookies, it really can be done for any product. It is simple as picking your strategy and following through down to the very last detail. To give your product the best chance it has, stop thinking about why your product itself can stick out from competitors; instead, start thinking about how you can create a truly amazing user experience.
AUTHOR: Natalie Prescott