“You know what you rarely see? The greatest entrepreneurs, athletes, leaders, and innovators speaking about shortcuts. They don’t talk about the easy street to success because they know it doesn’t exist.”
For the launch of Ladder, we wanted to approach this unlike any other brand in the health and wellness industry. Since we entered a cluttered space full of magic pills and empty promises, we wanted to hold a mirror up and put people on notice that things were going to change. They would soon learn that Ladder is coming to support your health and wellness goals with access to the very same products, information, and experts that empower our founders to live their best lives.
“Was LeBron James sending a message regarding his future with his hat after Cleveland’s Game 7 win in Boston last month?”
Our vehicle for our message was a simple black hat with the phrase “There is No Magic Pill,” and our yet-to-be-revealed Ladder logo.
Leveraging the visibility of LeBron James during the NBA playoffs, he debuted the hat during the press conference for the Cleveland Cavaliers’ decisive Eastern Conference Finals game seven win against the Boston Celtics.
Concurrently with the press conference, we launched thereisnomagicpill.com, where we captured emails and offered the very same hat for sale. Also, we created an Instagram page @thereisnomagicpillofficial
Soon the other founders posted themselves wearing the hats and utilizing #thereisnomagicpill. We followed with an influencer seeding program of the hat which we would then follow up at launch with the gifting of a Ladder product sampler.
Speculation around the messaging and the brand hit a high note when ESPN wrote a homepage article about the hidden meaning behind LeBron wearing the hat. Knockoff hats hit Amazon immediately, and people were writing articles and emailing us asking what this was all about.
The week of launch, we dropped our teaser video featuring our founders. A few days later, we launched with a brand anthem video "We are Ladder" on our founders' social pages and opened weareladder.com.
