The YETI brand has a reputation for products that work. The coolers keep beverages colder for longer. The thermoses will protect ice or hot coffee for seemingly weeks on end. In the outdoor product world, there are few names more synonymous with quality and, therefore, prestige, than YETI. And, because of that, plenty of companies have created products that look a lot like YETI products — sometimes too close, causing YETI to involve lawyers.
Over time, YETI has expanded beyond just coolers and thermoses, growing its outdoor product ecosystem with the addition of bags, chairs, apparel, pet accessories, and more.
The latest item continues that trend of outdoor products with well-placed branding and an eyebrow-raising price tag: A $400 cast iron skillet.
On the surface, it looks like any other 12″ cast iron skillet, albeit with a “YETI” logo on the top. But, YETI bills it as “the last skillet you’ll ever need,” and backs it up with what really makes this item so special and appealing: The care kit it comes with.
People who use cast iron pans know how much effort goes into taking care of them if you do it right. You have to clean them a certain way, you have to season them, you have to protect them. The YETI pan, created in collaboration with Butter Pat Industries in Maryland, comes pre-seasoned, and also comes complete with a branded cotton cinch top bag, a metal ring rag to scrape up debris, and a branded scraper card.
This is the key here: The item is just a pan, but the whole thing is a branding experience from YETI. It’s about the things that come with the pan that really make it stand out from the rest. And anyone who has YETI items already will want this to complement their existing collection, including the little cleaning accessories and tote bag.
On the YETI website, it looks like the kit even comes with a few stickers. And this just enforces the point even more. For a promotional campaign where the focus is a singular item like a pan, you should still try to accessorize and expand the scope of the promotion to include products that work alongside the main event. The stickers will end up on water bottles, rear windshields, skateboards, or any flat surface that the end-user wants to use to promote the brand. They’ll want to use the scraper card that came with the pan, especially since it was made specifically for YETI products. They might not store the pan in the branded cotton tote, but you know they will store something in there.
More than anything, it shows how you can integrate print and soft goods in with promotional products. Items need bags. Everyone loves stickers. Picture the end-user actually using the item, and consider the products that are involved in that process, too.
400 bucks is not a small amount for a pan. But, $400 seems a lot more reasonable when you frame it as buying a whole experiential kit.
YETI is a trendsetter in the outdoor products world. The company did not invent the cast iron skillet, and it did not reinvent it with this new item. But, it did showcase again how it knows how to brand a product.
