Traffic With Sleeves
By Sarah Radwanick - March 2, 2009
Recently, a certain blanket with sleeves - otherwise known as the Snuggie - has become a national phenomenon, infiltrating pop culture with its ubiquitous infomercial, celebrity Snuggie sightings and Facebook groups. It has inspired a massive cult following and even Snuggie-themed social events, including Snuggie Bar Crawls across the nation.
Recently it was reported that more than four million Snuggies were sold during a three month period, with orders continuing to flood in making it difficult to keep the item in stock.
As this national obsession continued to take hold, my curiosity eventually got the best of me. I decided to take a look and see how Americans were turning to the Internet to satisfy their Snuggie craving. Not surprisingly, traffic to Snuggie-related sites peaked during the holiday season in December, with FreeSnuggie.com reaching 1 million visitors that month and GetSnuggie.com reporting about half that number.
Searches for Snuggie also peaked in December, with almost half a million searches performed for the term “Snuggie,” up from 110,000 searches for the term in November. (By comparison, there were 180,000 searches for the term “ShamWow” in December - pretty impressive when you consider that Snuggie lacks the marketing muscle of ShamWow’s spokesman extraordinaire, Vince Offer.)
Obviously I was intrigued by the Snuggie. I mean, how many times have I sat cold on my couch under just a normal blanket cursing the fact that it rendered my hands useless to perform simple tasks such as answering my phone, flipping the TV channel or even holding a baby? I had finally had enough and caved, purchasing my own Snuggie.
I must say, it was worth it.
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Comments (2)
Nice warm and cozy article. May I post your pic on SnuggieSightings.com and link back to your article for the photo credit and source? You can visit the About page on the site to see its quick rise in popularity with the media, and various coverage it has received (as well as documenting when the site hit the top of Google trends before it was even 3 weeks old, which spawned all sorts of copy cat sites, etc.) I am also behind the SnuggiePubCrawls.com website, which is documenting the history of the Snuggie Pub Crawls. We have 4 crawls already completed and documented, with pics on the site.
Back on Jan. 10 of this year, when I searched for Snuggie Sightings, I pulled up nothing. The site went up the next day. I'm honored to see the term being used in the lexicon, and way to sport that Snuggie.
Posted by SnuggieSightings.com | March 2, 2009 2:49 PM
Posted on March 2, 2009 14:49
LOL, I cannot believe you brought your Snuggie to the office. Lounging comfortably, studying marketing research techniques, and typing out an email...three activities that could never have been performed simultaneously. Until now. Very cool article btw. Have to say, though, that the exclusion of Mr. Offer in the snuggie commercials is to the company's distict advantage. That gentlman does very little to inspire confidence. Maybe if he had British accent I'd trust him...
Posted by Chris | March 4, 2009 10:17 PM
Posted on March 4, 2009 22:17