Lightning Strike Team: How to Build a Powerhouse Marketing Team with Massive Lightning Strike Muscles
If your team doesnât align, the strike fizzles before it has a chance to ignite.
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Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,
In 2014, DUDE Wipes bet everything on a $10,000 Lightning Strike.
The company was getting off the ground. Their big idea (flushable wipes for men) was more punchline than business plan. Retailers brushed them off. Investors rolled their eyes. Even friends joked.
The company was alive, but it needed attention.
Ryan Meegan, co-founder and CMO of DUDE Wipes, saw an opening.
UFC fighters could still negotiate their own sponsorships, and the sport was exploding. So, Ryan convinced the team to bet $10,000 (an amount that made the CFO nervous) on a sponsorship with fighter Tyron Woodley. The deal was simple: Put âDUDE Wipesâ on the back of Tyronâs trunks during a pay-per-view fight.
That night, the world discovered DUDE Wipes.
When the fight streamed, social media blew up.
The DUDE Wipes team jumped into every conversation they could find, riffing on the logo placement, poking fun, and amplifying the jokes fans were already making. A company no one had heard of a week earlier was (suddenly) in the middle of the cultural conversation.
By the end of the night, DUDE Wipes was trending #3 worldwide on Twitter.
What made it work was not just what the Dudes did (which was smart), but also how the team played it.
They werenât spectators. They were in the fightâon their phones, hijacking conversations, fueling the word of mouth in real time. Every person in the company knew the stakes. Everyone leaned in. When the strike hit, they all pushed together.
(This is called âthe multiplier effect,â doing a bunch of small things to multiply the impact of your big thing.)
It worked so well that the UFC eventually banned brands from sponsoring fightersâ shorts altogether. But the damage was done. DUDE Wipes had shown that with the right strike, they could hijack a cultural moment and punch way above their weight.
A Lightning Strike is the moment you create in the market and the muscle you build inside your company.
That first $10,000 strike proved DUDE Wipes could get people talking. Every strike since has built on that muscle with sharp timing, smart execution, and big outcomes.
This mini-book is about that next level.
When a Lightning Strike stops being a stunt and starts becoming a system. Where your team learns to move as one. How culture, competence, and competition collide.
In the Lightning Strike Playbook, we showed you how to choose between the different types of strikes. In Part 2, we broke down how to plan them on any budget. Now, youâll see the team dynamics below deck:
The culture shifts that make a strike feel like your moment, not just marketingâs job
The role of a âStrike Czarâ and why competence matters more than headcount
Ways to mobilize your team in real time so momentum doesnât slip away
How to use the AâG framework to track a strike from activation to cultural moment
The signals that show your strike is working, both inside the company and out in the market
Let's dive in. âĄ
Lightning Strike Team
When you launch a Lightning Strike, the outside world only sees the flash.
They see the logo on Tyron Woodleyâs trunks. The Elton John concert at Caesarâs Palace. The Cleveland Browns helmet barge floating in Lake Erie. They see the strike when it hits the market.
What they donât see are the weeks (most often, months) of battles inside the walls of a company.
Those battles are where most strikes die.
They die because the CFO wonât sign off, or the CEO sees it as âjust a stunt.â
They die because no one takes ownership. Thereâs no Strike Czar holding the work together.
They die because the product team is late, or the sales team is misaligned, or nobody knows whoâs responsible for the follow-through.
They die because the 67 people on the steering committee water down the legendary strike idea into safe, forgettable, pablum.
Often, the strike idea itself isnât the problemâitâs the execution.
Too many companies reduce Lightning Strikes to one-off campaigns. Something marketing can throw money at when the calendar looks empty. But a strike is not a side project or a slot on the calendar. Itâs a forcing function that makes every department move in sync.
"Committees do legendary marketing." - Said no one ever.
If your team doesnât align, the strike fizzles before it has a chance to ignite.
A Lightning Strike is a cross-functional category and culture creator that builds belief.
No belief.
No business.
Lightning Strikes are a skill.
A core competence that must be mastered.
(Read that three times.)
If you canât mobilize your own people around it, youâll never mobilize the market. Often, the first success always feels like luck. You stumble into a moment. You place a small bet. You get more attention than you deserve.
For DUDE Wipes, it was $10,000 on a UFC fight. For Chegg, it was a scrappy campus holiday called Textbook Tuesday. For HydraFacial, it was turning a mandatory training session into a Superconsumer spectacle.
Every strike teaches you something:
How to build cultural energy.
How to build unity, focus, and commitment.
How to time a launch so the whole company hits the note together.
How to turn a moment into momentum, so word-of-mouth carries long after the event ends.
The more you launch Lightning Strikes, the sharper you get. The faster your team moves. The clearer the playbook becomes. Thatâs why strikes are a rhythm your company can practice until it becomes second nature.
The power kicks in when every strike builds on the last one.
What (once) felt impossible becomes your marketing operating system.
A strike must involve your customers, employees, partners, and enemies.
When you run a strike, you impact three things at once:
1. Create Culture â Strikes create the âweâ moment inside your walls. They turn a random Tuesday into game day. Suddenly, engineers, sales reps, marketers, and even the CEO feel like theyâre on the same field. Driving toward the same outcome.
The compounding effect of strikes is hard to over-state.
They accelerate confidence inside your outfit. Your people will say, "Weâre really doing this!â That's because Lighting Strikes build belief.
After the second, third, and fourth strike, your team will say, âWeâre making history!â
2. Build Competence â Strikes sharpen execution, force deadlines, and build cross-functional muscle.
Strikes also take pressure out of the system. When your people know that you do 1-4 strikes a year (any more and they are not strikes), your team settles into a rhythm. Every strike makes the next one easier because your team learns to operate under pressure.
(Over time, product teams will fight to get their product as part of the next strike. Thatâs what you want.)
3. Scare The đŠ Out Of Competitors â You want to do marketing that causes emergency board meetings at your competition.
You want to do marketing that makes people quit the competition and apply for jobs with you.
Strikes that make rivals flinch.
Strikes that create fear, confusion, and even copycatting. Sometimes, the measure of success isnât (just) the pipeline you generate, but the night terrors you give the bad guys.
You want the sales team at competitors to think they are cooked in a deal against you. You want the competition to psychologically surrender. (Most prize fights are won before the opening bell.) You want competitors, just like you want customers, to âknowâ you're winning.
Each strike creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
a) Itâs a matter of time before you buy this category
b) Weâre the category leader, so youâll buy from us
c) Our competition is a risky bet
This will scare the competition.
Customers can tell the difference between whoâs creating and whoâs competing. So can partners and investors.
The more you scare your competition, the more they will fear you. The more they fear you, the more they will get knocked off their game and follow (and copy) you. Your POV. Your category design. Your product strategy.
They will play defense.
Be on their back foot.
The more rent-free space you dominate in their heads, the more they willâwithout realizing itâ telegraph to their people, customers, partners, and investors that you are the category king.
Excellent.
This is why Lightning Strikes matter.
If you want to lead the category, you have to lead the category.
Each strike is a cultural rally inside your walls, a training ground for execution, and a market signal that makes the bad guys shake.
It should also make their CEO and exec team talk about you (a lot). The more their executives talk about you. The more everyone in their company (thinks) knows they are losing and you are the category king. The more their execs are forced to answer questions about you, from customers, employers, partners, investors, and board directors, the more fear they will have.
After a handful of well-executed strikes (with a legendary product and legendary company), the competition will know they lost to you.
This becomes a vicious cycle for them.
And a virtuous cycle for you.
Companies executing legendary strikes on a regular cadence win.
Every time you pull one off, your company learns how to move fast and drive word of mouth. Culture strengthens. Competence builds. Competitors feel the pressure. Little by little, your organization starts to run on the rhythm of Lightning Strikes.
Lightning Strike Muscles
The secret to a strike is the team behind it.
Ryan says four processes, principles, power and pulse check drive every DUDE Wipes Lightning Strike. Theyâre simple, but they explain why a small challenger with five- and six-figure budgets has been able to outmaneuver billion-dollar incumbents.
75/25 Reactive process â Most of their strikes are reactive, which is completely the opposite for 99% of marketing teams in corporate America. The magic happens because the team is always ready to pounce when the right moment hits.
Simplicity is Velocity principle â Everyone knows the brand, the voice, and the playbook. The leaders are the supers. That clarity lets them move fast without waiting for approvals.
Real-Time Activation power â Strikes donât win in PowerPoint. They win because the team is in the trenches, posting and commenting in real time. Reaction speed and agility is their power.
A-G virality pulse check â Everyone wants their marketing to go viral. Ryan and team are the only marketers that built a consistent method to increase their odds of generating massive earned media. They do it through a proprietary pulse check theyâve built over time to know when to hold, fold and go all in.
Thatâs how a company with five- and six-figure budgets has outmaneuvered billion-dollar competitors.
Not because they spend more, but because their team acts like a strike unit. They're mobilized, aligned, and trained to turn opportunities into outcomes.
If you want to run legendary Lightning Strikes, you have to build a legendary team.
75/25 Reactive Process = Cost Efficiency and Leverage
Three-quarters of DUDE Wipesâ strikes are reactive.
The DUDEâs marketing team moves so fast, they are more like firefighters who launch into action at a momentâs notice. It even surprises the rest of the company. That's because they act like an M&A team more than a marketing team.
When a deal is live, there are a few short weeks of high stress, low sleep, and uncertainty.
Virtually no one from traditional corporate America marketing would sign up to do this.
The revenue prevention department at most companies would never tolerate it. Most would have a hernia staring at a blank marketing calendar for the next quarter.
Ryan built his marketing team differently.
Which is why the DUDEâs will maintain a marketing competitive advantage over every big CPG brand they ever compete against. So why does Pirate Ryan do it this way? Being reactive means they get to be the hero to their advertising partners. Imagine a billboard company has a brand secured for a week in October coming up, and for some reason, the brand pulls out. Now the manager of the billboard has a revenue hole to fill. The manager knows if another brand doesnât come in to fill that spot, that revenue is lost forever.
Which means the manager might miss a revenue target.
Which means the manager's job might be on the line.
Which means Pirate Ryan and team get to be the hero. It also means Pirate Jeff Klimkowski and Pirate Sean Riley, the CFO and CEO of DUDE Wipes, respectively, love the marketing team becauseâŚ
Working media costs are lower. Pirate Ryan knows he can get $1.00 of marketing for far less because heâs the hero and savior. DUDE Wipes has over $200 million in revenue, but the vast majority of their lightning strikes are five figures or low six figures.
(Read that three times.)
Their leverage to âDUDE-ifyâ the brand is higher. Pirate Ryanâs team and the NHL were in talks for a situation like this. The NHL just wanted the DUDE Wipes brand logo to be shown. Pirate Ryan and team fought for their POV to be displayed. It went all the way up to the NHL commissioner, and Pirate Ryan held steady because he had leverage
Then you get things like this, which exponentially increases the likelihood it goes viral.
They donât always come from a perfect marketing calendar or a months-long plan. Most of the time, they show up last-minute: a sponsorship deal no one else grabbed, a cultural moment begging for a cheeky reply, or an athlete doing something so absurd you canât not join the conversation.
Thatâs where competence shows up.
It takes courage to be legendary.
The DUDE Wipes team has built the muscle to move on instinct.
They donât choke on approvals or drown in analysis. They act. And because theyâve built that muscle, they can hijack an NFL touchdown celebration into a week-long media cycle.
How to be 75/25 reactive:
Pre-commit budget: Set aside a portion of spend for strikes so you can say yes without hesitation.
Clarify the filters: Agree on 2-3 criteria that make a moment worth striking (e.g., cultural fit, audience reach, dudefication).
Assign a strike unit: A small group who can green-light and activate immediately.
Practice on singles & doubles: Donât wait for the perfect moment. Use small plays to build confidence and pattern recognition.
Readiness separates companies that watch a strike happen from the ones who create it.
Simplicity is Velocity principle = Culture
Inside DUDE Wipes, âsimplicity is velocityâ has become a cultural law.
Everyone knows the companyâs voice and the playbook. Importantly, nearly everyone at DUDE Wipes is a Superconsumer. Pirates Ryan, Jeff, and Sean just need to ask each other, "Would this make us laugh?"
Because they are the Superconsumer.
(Itâs hard to appreciate how rare this is at any big company. We know. The percentage of companies that can pull this off is de minimis.)
Nobody needs to ask: Would DUDE Wipes say this?
That cultural clarity creates speed.
When Ryan or his team sees an opportunity, they donât have to explain it to ten departments. They just move. When the strike hits, the entire company feels itânot just the marketing team. Engineers, ops, sales reps, and investors see the conversation unfold in real time and feel proud: We did that.
How to make simplicity your strike law:
Codify the voice: Create a one-pager of how your company talks (and how it never talks).
Crush over-approvals: Limit sign-off to 1â2 people max for reactive strikes.
Celebrate the hits: Share screenshots, coverage, and memes internally so the whole company feels pride.
Build rituals: Every strike is âgame day.â Treat it like one with pre-game, live-game, and post-game rituals.
Simple, fast strikes create exponential momentum inside and outside your company.
When your whole company speaks with one voice, competitors canât keep up. Youâre flooding the zone. Theyâre doomed.
Real-Time Activation Power = Competitors Crapping
The final principle is what makes rivals nervous: DUDE Wipes plays live.
This makes their competitors sh*t their pants.
Theyâre on their phones during the fight, tweeting into the stream, responding to fans, amplifying every jab. That real-time presence makes it almost impossible for competitors to keep up. By the time a bigger, slower company notices, DUDE Wipes has already hijacked the conversation and moved three steps ahead.
Competitors find themselves reacting to DUDE Wipes, instead of the other way around.
How to master real-time activation:
Designate live players: People who own social, PR, and community in the moment. No excuses, no delays.
Prepare the firepower: Draft potential headlines, memes, or responses ahead of time so you can deploy them instantly.
Engage, donât broadcast: Comment, reply, banter. Donât just push your own content.
Measure reaction, not impressions: Track how far the strike spreads (AâG) rather than how many eyeballs you âbought.â
Every legendary Lightning Strike is a chain reaction.
Remember. Word of mouth is, was, and always will be the greatest form of marketing.
(Going viral is digital WOM.)
Once you activate, the strike can spread from Supers to celebrities to the entire market. That's when it becomes a cultural moment.
Here's how to do it.