One moment on TikTok can be enough to turn people into celebrities overnight. One well-timed joke, one particularly well-choreographed dance routine, one product recommendation can make all the difference.
Koozie Group is already one of the biggest names in writing instruments. The BIC brand has long been associated with ballpoint pens and beyond. But, for Gen Z who grew up typing on smartphones and tablets, a little reminder is sometimes necessary.
The Post
TikTok user Sam Hart (doing business as thesam_show) described what she called one of her greatest “girl boss moments” involving the BIC Intensity Clic Gel Pen.
As the story goes, Hart, who calls herself a “pen enthusiast,” was signing a lease for her new apartment, and received a promotional pen with the apartment’s name on it.
“I loved the pen,” she says in the video. “I was like, ‘This is the best pen I’ve ever used, blah, blah, blah.’ I take like five of these pens because they have a bunch made, and I use these pens until they run out, you know? This is just the best pen I’ve ever had.”
When the ink ran dry, she asked the apartment building what kind of pens they were, hoping to re-up for herself, and she found out she could only buy them as decorated promo products in large quantities.
Ready to “give up” and order 70 with her own name on it, serendipity reared its head, and Hart was given the task at work to design a yearly branded merchandise campaign.
And, duh, she wanted to pitch the pen. Her boss didn’t quite get the hype, but trusted her.
“I get the pens, I get, like, a big bulk order of the pens, and I distribute them around the office,” Hart says. “People are coming to my office to be like, ‘Samantha, these pens.’ And I’m like, ‘I know! These pens!’ People love the pens. They’re raving about the pens. I am the most popular person in the office because I am the one who procured these pens. I’m a hero, in fact.”
The story ended with Hart saying that she is once again about to run out of the stash she siphoned off of this order, and unfortunately no longer works in a position to get more.
The video currently is at 1.3 million likes, 7,678 comments, 85,000 saves, and 20,200 shares.
Koozie Group’s Reaction
Rachel Rosario, senior director of marketing and communications for Koozie Group, says they got wind of their viral status last Thursday, May 2.
“As soon as we became aware of the video, we launched a campaign to capitalize on the increased interest,” Rosario says. “This included social media posts, blog content, email scripts, and added attention on our website. Our sales team is actively engaging with our customers, letting them know about the popularity of the BIC Intensity Clic Gel Pen and that we are its exclusive supplier.”
Just in case distributors saw the video on TikTok – or, more accurately, just in case distributors’ end-buyer customers saw the video on TikTok – Rosario says that Koozie Group had its teams prepared for an influx of orders. It was all-hands-on-deck in Clearwater.
“This included supply chain to marketing to sales and our sample department,” she says. “We quickly placed orders for more samples because we were getting triple the number of sample requests that we normally do. One of our customers even received 1,200 sample requests in 48 hours.”
We have to imagine that at least one of those sample requests came from Hart, but we don’t want to editorialize too much here.
It’s natural for a business to have some knee-jerk reaction or feel overwhelmed when something like this happens. This is lightning striking. And lightning famously doesn’t strike the same place twice unless you are unbelievably lucky (or unlucky, if it’s real lightning).
Rosario and Koozie Group had to make sure that they were taking advantage of the excitement appropriately, but not losing their heads. The goal, after all, was to turn this into business.
“The challenging part is trying to understand how end-user samples for a viral pen will translate to promotional product bulk order sales,” she says. “Regardless, we’re prepared to support an increaes in production needs, and our Clearwater team is read yfor what comes next.”
If you’re a promotional products specialist and you somehow earn that TikTok Midas touch, Rosario has a few pieces of advice she gleaned from her own 15 minutes of promo fame.
The first is to be ready to pump out as much content as possible on social media to join the SEO wave. From there, she says it’s crucial to communicate with your team to ensure that everyone knows the task at hand and what their role is.
“We created specific content for our sales team to use so they could reach out to their customers to educate them about what was happening and about the BIC Intensity Clic Gel Pen itself so they can strike while the iron is hot,” Rosario says.
Knowing that viral fame doesn’t last long, Rosario says the team is already using this moment to shift attention to other products to hopefully maintain peoples’ attention and secure more orders.
“Knowing that the ICLGEL is going to be a popular item, we are also sharing information about the new BIC Ferocity Clic Gel Pen, which is very similar to the ICLGEL but with a slimmer profile,” she says. “For all the lefties out there, it also has a fast-drying ink – even though the gel in the ICLGEL dries pretty quickly, too.”
Ned Flanders’ Leftorium TikTok reviews will love that one.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a pen go viral on TikTok. In October of 2020, the kids were obsessed with the Sharpie S-Gel. The TikTok universe has also responded to promotional products like packaging, apparel and more.
There will be another it-pen on TikTok sooner rather than later. But, what Koozie did was position itself and its products to have a good chance of claiming that title.
