AKRON — Blimps are cool. Buy tires.
Those two sentences already have my vote for the best catchphrase of 2025.
That simple marketing advice — initially used as a caption on social media — has erupted into a white-hot social media campaign. The rich — and always edgy — repository of Goodyear Blimp Instagram posts over the past six-plus months, the brainchild of Goodyear's Leah Eaton, has lifted the venerable airship to new heights, particularly among a young, male audience.
Last year alone, the Goodyear Blimp Instagram account amassed 20 million views. The entity has about 126,000 followers and is growing daily. The blimp also has accounts on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
That catchphrase, hatched in June of 2024, has become the impetus behind the blimp's popular social media campaign, just as the airship celebrates its 100th birthday this year.
The five words are emblazoned across dark blue t-shirts, selling for $25 each on thegoodyearstore.com, alongside other blimp merchandise such as keychains, coffee mugs, magnets, airship crew polos and the ever popular blimp stress relievers and miniature inflatable blimps.
"I'm a big believer in social media," said Eaton, the senior digital communications specialist at the Akron-based tire maker. "As a communication tool, it is unique in the sense that you get instant feedback. It's a two-way street; it's not like a press release. You're getting feedback from your audience, your consumers, right away."
Her initial challenge, she said, was to connect two very different Goodyear entities —the blimp and tires — while "walking a thoughtful line."
"There's not a real natural way to do it, you know?" she said. "The blimp has tires, right? But it's an aviation tire, and they look unbelievably small in comparison to the blimp. So they don't really lend themselves to being the center of the show. And so it was kind of almost born out of, this is a really hard challenge."
She said it just made sense "to be in your face with it. That's what the blimp is like. It's out there. That's kind of the mission. And so it just came to me, kind of in that moment."
The feedback from followers, she said, was almost immediate. One video has 600,000-plus views alone.
"I pay a lot of attention to the comments as, I think everybody does on social," she said. "And so when I started hearing things back, I was like, 'Oh, there's something here.' It was resonating with people. And since then, there have been a few things that people have kind of glommed on to, and those are things that I consistently double down on."
As the tire maker's social media channel manager, Eaton handles all of the concepts, writing and managing of comments. Goodyear has an in-house creative services team that produces all the video and content capture.
While the catchphrase started the social wildfire, she has since added kindling to the blaze.
In one video, a voice says, "Guys will see the Goodyear blimp and say 'Hell, yeah,'" while a Tetris-like pair of black sunglasses are fitted across the front of the blimp.
In another, "Blimps be bussin,'" a Gen X male voice — a familiar one for those who work with the Goodyear public relations team — delivers a Gen Z monologue, interspersing slang terms such as drip, gyatt, cap, rizz and skibidi.
If you don't know what they mean, look them up. I just did ...
In another, the song "Baddie Friend" by Kevo Jefe, plays as a collage of blimp photos and videos float across the screen. The caption: Make this go viral so my boss doesn't fire me.
That certainly doesn't fit the stereotype of most every tire maker: conservative, profit-driven — some might even say stodgy.
Eaton understands the fine line she is negotiating: everyone, she said, has a comfort zone.
"You see stories go viral for the wrong reasons," she said. "So it's not that the cautiousness is unfounded, but there's so much potential there. So once you know the process ... (you do) baby steps, testing and learning, testing and learning, measuring, analyzing, reporting results."
She characterized it as "a very incremental journey to where we are now creatively, because it's all about learning what resonates with your audience. And we're really lucky to have the blimp, because that's something that nobody else has, and it allows us to do things that nobody else does."
Eaton made another point that might get lost in any social media discussion: it is far more natural to follow family, friends, maybe even influencers, than to follow a brand. Especially one you can't buy and few experience in person.
The brand, she said, has to provide a reason for you to care.
"On social, being entertaining is one of the number one ways to do that and grab that attention," she said. "It is really just about being entertaining and educating people about the blimp and bringing the blimp to people who don't see it all the time, and showcasing those facts in creative ways."
Still, there is no doubt that short videos, such as the one titled "Reasons the blimp won't survive in the wild," isn't just out of the box; it's out of the hangar.
The key, she said, is "having everybody aligned on your vision, and then proving it out slowly over time and being like, look, this is resonating with our audience. We are reaching new people. You can see how the positive sentiment and how our audience is growing. That allowed us to kind of keep building the case."
Most of the audience, she said, believe the creative behind the brand's social is a 21-year-old male college intern.
She is neither, calling herself a Millennial posing as a Gen Z.
Her audience, she said, isn't what she thought it would be, either. She initially prepared content for a 32-year-old woman; she has since discovered her audience is predominantly male, ages 18-24, with a smattering of teenagers between 13 and 17.
"When you're socials are telling you something else, you have to pivot," she said. "You have to learn from that and know who you are."
Another fact she discovered: People like to personify the blimp.
In fact, each of the three U.S.-based blimps have a nickname, based on their unpredictable personality: Christine (officially Wingfoot Three, in Akron); Carrie (Wingfoot Two, Carson City, Calif.); and Cybil (Wingfoot One, Pompano Beach, Fla.).
"People think of the blimp like a pet. They love the blimp like a pet," she said. "They love the fleet like a group of sisters. They want to know their different personalities: How does Wingfoot One differ from Wingfoot Two, and so on. The blimp is like an 'it girl,' really cool, like doing the latest dance trend."
As with any business, Eaton realizes the blimp's social media campaign is only as good as its next creative post.
"That's what I like about it, that's it's really challenging," she said. "You have to be creative all the time. You always have to be thinking about, who you are, who your audience is, and how can you marry those two things: How can you be who you are in a way that's interesting to people, and make content that people genuinely want to consume?"
The audience can be distracted away very quickly. They get "banner blindness," she said. But in social media, metrics tell the story immediately.
"You don't get many things like that in life where you do something, and then you can immediately know how it went ... being able to kind of measure and evaluate and continually refine and evolve. Who we are now is very different from the vision that I came to the team with a year ago because of what we've learned. So always be able to evolve, learn and grow."
And don't ever forget: "Blimps are cool. Buy tires."