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A major marketing expert claimed that Stanley unleashed a “perfect storm” of viral marketing with social media monolith TikTok to get consumers crazy for its 40 oz. Quencher mugs. 

Victor Lee, the president of marketing consulting group Advantage Unified Commerce, recently spoke to Fox News Digital about how the company used the social media platform to snag the attention of millions of Americans and get them to buy its tumbler dubbed the “Stanley Cup” by fans. 

The strategy netted the company ten times its usual annual profits in just a short period of time and made legions of consumers ravenous for the product.

The expert called Stanleys entrance into the viral marketing space “brilliant,” especially for being able to take something as innocuous as a water bottle and turn it into a must-have product.

The Stanley Cup craze has been in overdrive in recent months, evidenced in viral videos showing consumers buying up store shelves of the product within minutes, and weeping for joy after getting them for Christmas.

The craze has become so prevalent that headlines have been made aboutparents telling bulliesto lay off their kids for not having an official Stanley tumbler.

Lee began by discussing the current social media landscape and how the tumbler company was able to use it to its advantage.

The expert mentioned how the current way to win the social media race is by doing the best at leveraging the attention of the platform users for the company or influencers benefit.

“Your phone is now saying, if I have five minutes to your attention, where do you want to go? And wherever you tap to, that’s who wins,” he said. “And if they don’t give you enough good stuff to occupy five minutes, you know you’re shutting that app off or that site off, and you’re going to another button, and you’re hitting it. That’s the race.”

He noted, “Who wins the race is what they did with your attention. And I think this is where TikTok fell into” Stanleys plans. 

The expert further detailed how TikTok, compared to other social media platforms, is best equipped to trigger audiences into a reaction, including buying products.

Providing an example, he said, “TikTok is very well known for, I’m going to throw a random challenge. Go do it. Go run and jump into that swimming pool. Go hop the fence or do this. And there’s a lot of other controversial stuff.”

He also referenced the growing “#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt” trend thats been sweeping the platform. The hashtag currently boasts 86.6 billion views and counting on all videos related to it. The trend involves users showing off the products theyve bought while scrolling the app, which seems to drive more marketing and sales for the products depicted.

This almost compulsive virality combined with product placement means “now there’s real business implications” for these social media platforms, Lee said, before adding that Stanley taking advantage of this dynamic “was the perfect storm.”

“I would say they absolutely defined a moment of time and succeeded in it,” the expert declared. 

Explaining how the company did this specifically, Lee noted that Stanley relied on a mixture of factors, including TikToks platform, and Stanleys knowledge of its audience.

He said, “It’s not all luck, its not all strategy. Its a fine mix of it. But it’s also a conviction of knowing where an audience is, in this case social media and TikTok specifically, and then allowing multiple adjacencies.” 

Providing examples, he continued, “Like you started innovative with an influencer, if you want to call it innovative, then you went into TikTok. Suddenly it’s like, Well, what’s the other adjacency? Well, is this audience also a Target audience? More Target than probably other retailers? Are they a Starbucks audience? More Starbucks than other coffee? Let’s go there.”

Stanley marketed its cups with both Target and Starbucks. The Target exclusive Stanley Quencher made news after viral video showed customers at a Target in El Paso allegedly buying up the stores entire stock within minutes. Lee said the brand partnership itself was a “traditional” strategy rather than “innovative” on its own, but then combined with the design of cups and TikTok marketing, thats where it become innovative. 

He said, “But they struck it where it is innovative. It is the big Stanley Cup, giant one. It is colored. It is exclusive. It is that. So that’s their innovation, which fits.”

Continuing, Lee discussed how social media, particularly TikTok, has been utilized by Stanley and other companies to generate a connection between the consumer and the product they see on their favorite influencers’ channels for example.

Mentioning his experience as the head of Hasbros digital marketing, he said, “During that time the craze in our world was the unboxing of toys. Why would a five-year-old kid watch an hour of YouTube of somebody opening up a toy? And what we found out is there’s a psychological effect of surprise, I have something, and it’s open, and there’s a connection to like, Christmas, of opening something up. And that to them just captured their attention.” 

He added that TikTok presents the current form of that. “Now you fast-forward it six, ten years later. What is that? Well, there’s entertainment value TikTok is a massive entertainment value of that.”

Lee added that TikTok is having a “double effect” on users. “Were we interesting? And did you do something? And I think that’s the magic intersection that people aren’t talking a lot about,” he said. 

Noting how marketing products benefits from this connection established between users and social media, he said, “Social media was always passive. I get to watch something, I get to engage, I get to feel that if there’s a celebrity involved, that I am closer to them than if I see them in their natural environment, on TV or in a movie. And social allows me a glimpse of their real life. Now, if I happened to start buying something from them, it makes me a tighter connection.”

“Because social feels more intimate and I’m closer to you and if I trust you it’s a perfect storm, is whats happening.”

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Panthers-Hurricanes Game 5 preview: Can Carolina force another game?

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Panthers-Hurricanes Game 5 preview: Can Carolina force another game?

All signs pointed to the Florida Panthers finishing off the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 4, but the Canes kept the series rolling with a 3-0 win on Monday.

Will the Panthers finish the story in Game 5? Or will the Hurricanes send the festivities back to South Florida again?

Here are matchup notes heading into Wednesday’s Game 5 from ESPN Research, as well as betting intel from ESPN BET:

More on Game 4: Recap | Grades

Matchup notes

Florida Panthers at Carolina Hurricanes
Game 5 | 8 p.m. ET | TNT

The Panthers’ odds to win the series are now -1600, adjusted from -5000 heading into Game 4. The Hurricanes’ odds have shifted to +750 (adjusted from +1500) after their win. The Panthers’ odds to win the Cup are now +105 (previously -110), while the Canes’ are now +1800. Sergei Bobrovsky is the leading Conn Smythe candidate in this series at +200, followed by Aleksander Barkov (+800).

Game 4 was the Canes’ first win in the round since Game 7 of the 2006 Eastern Conference finals against the Buffalo Sabres, snapping a 15-game conference finals losing streak. It was the longest losing streak in NHL playoff history for a team in the round preceding the Stanley Cup Final. The Hurricanes are now 4-4 all-time in Game 4s when trailing 3-0 in a best-of-seven series.

Frederik Andersen made 20 saves for his fifth career playoff shutout, his second with the Hurricanes. He joins Cam Ward (four), Kevin Weekes (two) and Petr Mrazek (two) as goaltenders with multiple playoff shutouts in Whalers/Hurricanes Stanley Cup playoffs history.

Carolina’s Logan Stankoven scored playoff goal No. 5 in the second period. He joins Erik Cole (six in 2002) and Warren Foegele (five in 2019) as the only rookies in Whalers/Hurricanes history to score at least five goals in a single Stanley Cup playoffs year.

Sebastian Aho scored an empty-net goal in the third period, his 32nd career playoff tally. That extends his own franchise record for career goals in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Panthers were shut out for the second time this postseason; both games were at home — the other instance was Game 6 of the second-round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Florida went 0-4 on the power play in Game 4, and the team is now 0-8 with the man advantage in the last two games of this series after going 4-for-5 in Games 1 and 2.

Though he hasn’t scored a goal in the past two games, Sam Bennett has a team-leading nine this postseason. That is two shy of the franchise record in a single playoff year, currently held by Matthew Tkachuk (2023) and Carter Verhaeghe (2024).


Scoring leaders

GP: 16 | G: 6 | A: 9

GP: 14 | G: 5 | A: 9

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Liverpool fan says his baby was flung 15ft in his pram and his partner run over during trophy parade

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Liverpool fan says his baby was flung 15ft in his pram and his partner run over during trophy parade

A father has told Sky News how his partner was driven over, and his baby son was flung 15ft in his pram, after they were hit by a vehicle during the Liverpool parade collision.

Daniel Everson, 36, had been with Sheree Aldridge and their five-month-old baby, Teddy, at Liverpool FC’s victory parade on Monday.

“The best day of my life turned into worst”, said Daniel, a lifelong fan of ‘The Reds’.

Daniel described the moment the car came towards him and his family.

“I tried to hold on to the front of the car and try and stop it, push it, do whatever I could [to stop it] from hitting my partner and my baby.

'The best day of my life turned into worst', Daniel Everson told Sky News.
Image:
Daniel Everson was in the crowd for the Liverpool trophy parade when the incident took place

“Me and my partner were flat on the roof, on the bonnet… we were just both trying to hold on for dear life with Ted next to us.

“And my partner went under the wheels of the car, of the front of the car, and it rolled over her leg, and I just bounced off to the side, but my boy and his pram got bounced totally in the opposite direction – about 15ft down the road.

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“As soon as that happened, I just started screaming for my partner, and I found her and I asked where Teddy was, and she didn’t know… and I found him and he was okay, thank God.

“He was in the road, in his pram, on his back, and I grabbed him. I chucked the pushchair to the side and I ran up to some paramedics with him.”

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The suspect is being held on suspicion of attempted murder, dangerous driving and drug driving.

Daniel, from Telford, said he felt like he was in “hell” as he rushed back to find Sheree.

“I had to carry her up the road with four police officers holding her while she was screaming and crying. At that point, I didn’t know what was wrong with her, but I could see the injuries to her leg,” he explained.

Sheree, 36, is recovering at Aintree University Hospital after suffering muscle tissue damage. Daniel has been allowed to return home with Teddy after he was assessed at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.

“I feel a lot of emotions right now. Upset, angry, traumatised. A lot of unanswered questions that need to be answered.

To me, it just wasn’t handled properly – the situation with the car getting that far into the crowd, in my opinion, he should not have got anywhere near us.”

Merseyside Police have now been given more time to question a 53-year-old arrested after a car struck a crowd at Liverpool FC’s victory parade on Monday.

The suspect, who police have described as a white British man from the local area, is being held on suspicion of attempted murder, dangerous driving, and drug driving.

Police have said the extra time they have been given to question the suspect runs into Thursday.

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Politics

Pakistan announces Bitcoin strategic reserve

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Pakistan announces Bitcoin strategic reserve

Pakistan announces Bitcoin strategic reserve

Bilal Bin Saqib, head of Pakistan’s crypto council, announced on May 28 that the country is moving to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

Speaking at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Saqib said the government of Pakistan followed the United States’ lead in establishing a Bitcoin strategic reserve and is embracing pro-crypto regulatory policies. The government official told the audience:

“Today is a very historic day. Today, I announce the Pakistani government is setting up its own government-led Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, and we want to thank the United States of America again because we were inspired by them.”

The announcement represents a significant departure from the government of Pakistan’s previous stance on cryptocurrencies, holding that crypto would never be legal in the country.

Pakistan’s shift reflects the broader trend of nation-states adopting pro-crypto policies following the regulatory shift in Washington, DC under the President Donald Trump administration.

Government, Bitcoin Reserve, Bitcoin2025
Bilal Bin Saqib at the Bitcoin 2025 conference announcing a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Source: Cointelegraph

Related: Pakistan appoints special assistant to PM on blockchain and crypto

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