Lightning Strike Playbook: How To Design Category-Defining Marketing Events For $10K, $100K, Or $1M+

Plan a Lightning Strike for any budget and situation.

Arrrrr! 🏴‍☠️ Welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of Category Pirates. Each week, we share radically different ideas to help you design new and different categories. For more: Dive into an audiobook, listen to a category design jam session, or upgrade to a Founding subscription to ask the Pirate Eddie Bot your category design questions.

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Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,

Most marketing is broken.

Not because the teams are bad or products are weak, but because the playbook is stale.

Too many companies have a marketing calendar, not a marketing strategy.

They create paid media calendars. A content treadmill designed to “stay visible.” Internal campaigns no one believes in. External campaigns no one talks about.

(And everyone wonders why the cash register isn’t singing.)

That’s called peanut butter marketing—spread thin, evenly, across the year.

• Targeted outbound and inbound messages

• A bunch of earned and owned media

• Maybe legacy media seasoning

• A dash of conferences

• Sprinkle some TikTok

• A swig of outdoor

• A little LinkedIn

• A pinch of SEO

Smear it all together and show up a little on every platform. But you’ll find nothing makes a big difference. That’s because everyone is always marketing, but nobody is ever heard.

Rise above the noise.

Or you are the noise.

If peanut butter marketing is your plan, you don’t need another campaign. You need a Lightning Strike.

A company-wide, POV-driven, Superconsumer-igniting, revenue-producing strike that aligns every department around a moment that makes people talk.

And makes the market move in your direction.

This is how to stop trying to win the activity contest. This is how you escape the incrementalism trap. This is how you create word-of-mouth on purpose. This is how you build belief at scale.

(And generate revenue and pipeline now.)

Just ask DUDE Wipes.

This year, the Dudes partnered with NFL superstar George Kittle to launch one of the most legendary low-six-figure Lightning Strikes in CPG history—Tight End University.

It started as a simple but powerful insight: Most NFL attention goes to quarterbacks and wide receivers. But tight ends? They’re the bruisers. The grinders. The unglamorous glue guys. So Kittle, along with Travis Kelce and Greg Olsen, decided to host a private, invite-only training summit for tight ends, by tight ends.

DUDE Wipes saw the moment for what it was:

A cultural wedge with massive WOM potential.

They didn’t just slap their logo on the 2025 event. They sent a branded bathroom truck to the field. They handed out wipes with custom packaging. They turned “Down. Set. Wipe.” into a moment of pride.

It was cheeky and unforgettable—and it launched the category into the future.

The event exploded on social media. Tight ends posted from the field. Fans, commentators, and even rival brands couldn’t stop talking about it. As the title sponsor, DUDE Wipes was a character in the story.

@dudewipesDeuce had a tough time at tight end university #DUDEWipes #tightenduniversity

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Just as important is CMO Ryan Meegan’s mastery.

He negotiated the Tight End U sponsorship in a way that made CFO Jeff Klimkowski proud. Ryan knows what the market rates are for various events. He also knows that, as famous as Travis Kelce is, DUDE Wipes brings an installed base of 40 million strong. He didn’t take the first offer. He didn’t take the second offer. He waited patiently until he knew he had a win-win price tag.

Today, DUDE Wipes is in every major retailer, growing year over year in a category that rarely makes headlines.

Because they don’t do peanut butter marketing. They do Lightning Strikes. Word-of-mouth-driven, Super-first, culture-bending moments that punch above their weight.

And Tight End U wasn’t a one-off.

It was a statement.

A Lightning Strike.

(We talked with Ryan about how his team plans and launches legendary strikes. We’ll share his framework and stories in the next mini-book.)

Whether you’ve got $10,000 or $1,000,000, the mechanics of a legendary Lightning Strike are the same:

1. Find your Superconsumers.

2. Deliver an exciting reason to talk.

3. Create a moment the market can’t ignore and can’t stop talking about.

4. Make the cash register sing. Now, next quarter, and next year.

We've run (and seen) strikes at every level of investment. We’ve done strikes that cost less than a used car and saved the company. We’ve done strikes that cost more than a house and won the category battle.

This mini-book is your playbook for both, and every strike in between.

Written by people who lived every word of what you're about to read. (Many times.)

Before we go any further, you should know this is not a “thinker’s high” theory mini-book.

We’ve already written the what, why, and how behind a Lightning Strike.

• The Lightning Strike Strategy, Part I

• The Lightning Strike Strategy, Part II

• The Lightning Strike Strategy, Part III

This is the “what kind” and “how much” book.

The “what’s actually possible” book.

The “don’t tell me you can’t afford it” book.

You’ll pick what outcome you want. You’ll find out how to engineer word-of-mouth (WOM) on any budget. Most importantly, you’ll see how to design the right type of strike for your category, including:

• What problem each strike is built to solve

• The three budget tiers and which is right for you

• Real-world examples from Chegg, Nike, and DUDE Wipes

• How to use AI prompts to plan your strike and pull it off

• And most importantly, how to tip WOM in your favor

Let’s dive in.

The Lightning Strike Playbook