In March of 2021 Peak Design was fed up.

It had come to their attention that Amazon had full-scale ripped off several of their best-selling camera bags — down to the placement of the bags’ trapezoidal logo.

Amazon is one of Peak Design’s biggest partners. The company had been selling Peak Design products on Amazon for years, and worked closely with Amazon to remove counterfeit and copycat products from their marketplace. Hence, it was jaw-dropping to discover that this same partner had copied one of their bestselling bags.

They even called it the “Everyday Sling,” which, funny enough, is the exact same name as Peak Design’s best-selling product.

Rather than calling their lawyers, Peak Design went to work on a short video response that would rise to a 10-top trending video on YouTube and acquire more than 4.6M views.

The 1:29 minute video, entitled, “A Tale of Two Slings,” leveraged Peak Design’s classic humor and wit to callout Amazon’s predatory behavior and create distinction about why a customer would want to purchase a product from a company known for award-winning design and social / environmental manufacturing standards.

With the help of Purple Orange, Peak Design not only amplified direct web traffic by 44% in one day but increased direct sales and became a global thought leader in the subject of Amazon copyright infringement.

• Utilized industry leading software to match subject material with the global media landscape 
• Multiplied audience engagement through succinct communication with top tier media outlets
• Worked tirelessly through the entire story lifecycle to maximize coverage

The positive effects generated by a viral piece of branded content are a marketers dream. One video on Youtube has the power to produce a year’s worth of web traffic, top of mind awareness, and brand loyalty within a condensed time frame. However, with approximately 500 hrs of video content uploaded to Youtube every minute, the likelihood of your video rising to the Olympic podium position of “Trending” is nearly impossible.

Unless, of course, the video is really good and you have a sophisticated content distribution strategy behind it.

Purple Orange rapidly researched mainstream media outlets dedicated reporting on the business of Amazon. Within hours, lists were built that pinpointed the staff writers and editors most likely to take notice of Peak Design’s actions against the retail behemoth.

With time of the essence, the often-used but never-good “spray and pray” method that so many agencies adopt would have resulted in dead leads and wasted time. Purple Orange’s measured approach garnered a 30% open rate of its first outbound email campaign, 12% higher than industry average.

Having worked closely with Purple Orange two days prior to the release of “A Tale of Two Slings,” reporters were able to build, edit and publish their stories to coincide with Peak Design’s launch on March 3, 2021. Within three hours of going live on Youtube, Purple Orange landed Peak Design dedicated coverage across industry leading publications including The Verge, Outside Business Journal, Engadget, PetaPixel, and Business Insider–a combined potential audience of 147,462,273 readers.

Within 24 hours, “A Tale of Two Slings,” racked up over 390,00 views, 810 comments and rose to #8 on Youtube’s top trending videos.

By March 5, 2021, after Peak Design CEO, Peter Dering, was interviewed for stories published on CNBC and Fast Company, Peak Design crested over 1.5M views, direct sales of the Peak Design Everyday Sling increased by 427%, and Amazon had changed the name of its copycat bag from the Amazon Basics Everyday Sling to the Amazon Basics Camera Bag.

Any internet meme can tell you that viral content has an expiration date. When advancing a viral brand story like, “A Tale of Two Slings,” Purple Orange didn’t stop until Peak Design cemented itself as the preeminent thought leader on the topic of Amazon’s product copycatting. This required Purple Orange to revise its original launch strategy, identify niche coverage opportunities and to continue to place Peak Design and Peter Dering at the center of conversations around Amazon’s business practices.

Over a seven month period Purple Orange placed Peak Design in a total of 83 articles including articles published in the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Yahoo, and a forthcoming documentary highlighting the big five in tech: Amazon, Facebook, Google, Facebook and Microsoft.