Chubbies: The Content Marketing Ninjas Disguised as a Short Shorts Company

All signs lead you to believe Chubbies Shorts is a men’s fashion e-commerce startup. They claim they sell men’s short shorts, and after visiting their website, I can confirm – they do in fact sell 5.5inch inseam shorts for about $60 a pop. But don’t let their appearance fool you. Chubbies co-founders Tom Montgomery, Preston Rutherford, Kyle Hency and Rainer Castillo have assembled a team of content marketing ninjas who move stealthily through your newsfeeds leaving only a trail of sharable, engaging content you can’t avoid clicking. Here’s how these fraternity-bros-turned-entrepreneurs turned a pair of shorts into a symbol for that “Friday at five” feeling.

A Necessity for Quality Content

Quality over quantity. Everyone says it, but few people live by it the way Chubbies does.

Chubbies organizes their content more similarly to the likes of Jimmy Fallon than a clothing brand. From their packaging to their order confirmation emails, Chubbies believes everything is an opportunity to create a sharable content experience for its customers. As such, Chubbies never misses out on an opportunity to engage its customers. For example, Chubbies has been known to send Big League Chew and baseball cards to recent customers out of the blue. They’ve also been known to send occasional hand-written notes to their customers. A small, additional effort can be the difference between an average customer experience and a memorable one.

Content IS your brand. It is your brand’s voice, and it sets the tone for the way customers interact with your brand.

Make Your Customer a Hero

This is the one scenario where receiving thousands of male selfies per week is a good thing. When a brand creates sharable experiences with its customers, it inspires them to do the same. Realistically, it’s fair to assume Chubbies doesn’t have a motorcycle specialist, a scuba diver, or a dedicated mustache-enthusiast in their ranks, but in a sense they do because they have engaged customers who are all of those things.

90% of the time your customers are cooler than you. Chubbies takes advantage of that. Most of what Chubbies does on social media is taking customer photos and transforming them into heroes simply by posting their photo with a clever caption. Who doesn’t love seeing a brand use their photo? And what brand doesn’t love having a free, stable and high-quality content database to pull from?

Don’t limit yourself to the digital space, either. In many cases, real world experiences can transform into sharable content. A Chubbies customer once wrote to the company in distress after his Chubbies were stolen from his gym locker. Rather than just sending the poor fella a new pair of shorts, Chubbies also signed him up for a week’s worth of free karate lessons. Naturally, he shared the story. Customer experiences translate into sharable content.

Glorify your customer and they will glorify you. Make them the hero.

Be Someone Your Customer Would Wanna Hang With

Picture your brand as a person. Would you want to hang out with him/her? If not, re-evaluate your brand. This is a big part of the Chubbies brand identity. They went as far as to actually find the human epitomization of their brand. His name? Will Cheesebro, and to answer your question—yes, he’s someone you’d definitely want to spend a day with.

With every piece of content they create, Chubbies seeks to deliver that “Friday at five” feeling. That means you’ll never see Chubbies trying to sell products on their social channels. Rather, you’ll find videos of real world Mario Kart racing, huge water slides, and rope swing beer pong. Who doesn’t want to watch stuff like that? Getting your content into people’s newsfeeds without paying for it is crucial for any brand in today’s world. Quality, sharable content is the key that opens up the door to people’s newsfeeds who may not have heard about your brand already.

In Conclusion: You Can’t be Chubbies, but You Can be Unique

I get it. Not all brands are dedicated to the weekend, having fun, and the shorts your dad wore in his college glory days. It doesn’t work for all brands to post videos of epic dance moves and decked out pontoon boats. That’s fine. Chubbies knows its audience is young males, and young males love that kind of stuff. Know your audience and create quality content geared towards engaging them. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the next content marketing ninja under investigation.

Interested in finding out more about Chubbies’ content marketing strategy? Check out this video of co-founders Tom Montgomery and Preston Rutherford’s presentation at HustleCon.