10 most baffling Snoop Dogg branding deals, from Hot Pockets to ‘lit' fire pits, ranked

Los Angeles Times

20-02-2025

At any given moment, you're likely to find Snoop Dog wherever eyeballs (bloodshot or otherwise) wander, from T-Mobile ads and bottles of 19 Crimes wine to Radio City Music Hall for last week's 'Saturday Night Live' 50th anniversary concert.
In late January, he performed at a cryptocurrency-themed inauguration party celebrating the incoming Trump administration. Less than three weeks later, he popped up in an anti-hate campaign during the Super Bowl telecast, face to face with football great Tom Brady.
A few days before the big game, HL Insights, a New York City–based marketing intelligence firm, released its 2025 Celebrity Influence Index, in which the rapper, actor and entrepreneur ranked No. 3 — just behind Dolly Parton — in relatability based on the question to consumers, 'Who would you like to grab a beer with?' Which is no doubt music to the ears of the folks at Corona, whose suds Snoop has pitched in many a television ad.
It's hard to get an accurate tally of all the endorsement deals, branding partnerships and business ventures the Long Beach-born Calvin Broadus has to his credit (emails to management of record went unanswered as of press time), but it's somewhere north of 70 that I've been able to reliably confirm, from the Cross Colours clothing ads of 1993 through that recent Super Bowl ad.
As I dug into every last corner of the interweb to get to that number, I was struck by the breadth of products he's pitched, which range from the more-or-less expected (sneakers, fast food, lighters) to the seriously random and bordering on absurd (pistachios, luggage, Skims and the credit score company Equifax).
What follows are some of the head-scratching highlights from that latter category, a ranking of the top 10 most perplexing campaigns that have leaned into the pot-puffing pitchman's easygoing likability and are so delightfully baffling that you might just feel like you've smoked some of that sticky icky yourself.
Nothing cemented Snoop's ascent to all-American everyman status more than last summer's wall-to-wall Snoopathon that was the 2024 Paris Olympics. His official gig was as a special correspondent for NBC, but in between carrying the Olympic torch through the streets of Saint-Denis in advance of the games and performing on the sand for the closing ceremony back in Long Beach, he became something more akin to a mascot.
Although it's impossible to say how much of NBC's reported 76% ratings boost over the Tokyo Olympics can be attributed to Snoop's presence, it certainly doesn't appear to have been detrimental. And with L.A. as the host of the 2028 Games, there's potential for the Snoop Dogg Olympic synergy to sizzle for shizzle.
As founder of the nonprofit Snoop Youth Football League back in 2005 and a performer at the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show, there's nothing surprising about a connection between the rapper and the game. Even so, the sponsorship of a college postseason bowl game, announced early last year, was notable because it marked the first time an alcohol brand has sponsored a bowl game since the NCAA changed its rules to allow it in 2022. What do Snoop and Dr. Dre and their canned cocktail have to do with a random bowl game whose past naming-rights sponsors include Offerpad and Barstool Sports? Your guess is as good as mine.
According to the organization's website, the first game in December drew a record crowd of 40,076, and there are still two more bowls to come under the sponsorship deal, which runs through 2026. Game on!
The whole idea of well-off famous folks helping to raise the profile of short-term rental companies like Vrbo (John Legend and Chrissy Teigen) and Airbnb (Mariah Carey, Justin Bieber) is a weird one all by itself. Why not rent an entire floor at the Four Seasons instead of someone's house? But a three-way collab between Snoop Dogg, prefab tiny accessory dwelling units (or ADU) maker Kithaus and Airbnb (with a little help from interior designer Emily Henderson) that popped up during the 2014 SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, is a glimpse at what inhabiting 120 square feet of Snoop's domain might look like.
Reflective gold marijuana-leaf print wallpaper? Check. A gold-painted, bedazzled mailbox? Check? An Arne Jacobsen egg chair, a blue velvet sofa under a piece of artwork that reads 'BO$$' and a coffee table topped with canine tchotchkes, video game controllers and a pistol-shaped lighter? Check, check and check. All further proof that, big or small, it's Snoop's world, and we're just living in it.
Is Snoop Dogg an avowed herbivore? Or did he just 'give up meat' the way he 'gave up smoke' for that Solo campaign? Does it even matter? His efforts on behalf of Beyond Meat, an El Segundo–based maker of plant-based meat alternatives felt ... organic. There was his 2019 pre-Grammys party where Carl's Jr. Beyond Burgers were on the menu. A few months later, he took to the 'Gram to proselytize the protein.
In early 2020, the collaboration added Dunkin' to the mix with the Beyond D-O-Double G — a sandwich consisting of a Beyond Meat sausage patty, egg and cheese clamped between two halves of a glazed doughnut (a combo that sounds like stoner food at its finest). The following fall — just in time for football season — Snoop took to a tricked-out food truck to visit L.A.-area Snoop Youth Football League games (talk about leveraging synergy) to hand out free samples of Snoop's Beyond Dogg — a meat-free take on a bratwurst smothered in tailgating-inspired chili. (If this has your taste buds tingling, there's a recipe online.)
When an earnest-sounding Snoop took to social media in November 2023 to declare he had decided to 'give up the smoke,' the media (including this outlet) couldn't help but take the bait. Was one of the world's most famously enthusiastic consumers of weed permanently passing the blunt? More than 4.7 million people clicked the 'like' button; celebrities posted their support. Weed heads began gnashing their teeth and rending their garments. (OK, not really, but you get the idea.)
Four long days later, while the weed world was coming to terms with what seemed like the loss of one of its most ardent supporters, the other shoe dropped: The misdirection (though, technically, not a lie) was actually part of the first national advertising campaign for Texas-based Solo Brands, maker of smokeless fire pits. A frenzy of follow-up press coverage and even more social media commentary ensued as everyone realized they'd jumped to conclusions.
The result? According to a post on X (formerly Twitter) from Solo's chief executive a few weeks later, some 7 billion impressions, and 10 months later, a follow-up campaign featuring limited-edition Solo stoves emblazoned with the slogan 'This pit is lit.' You can't make this stuff up.
What's the demographic crossover between Snoop fans and folks who carbonate their own beverages at home? According to at least one published report, not much. But the more pressing question — especially if you caught this PepsiCo subsidiary's 2020 holiday ad campaign: What's with the painting of Snoop as a centaur, the family table flanked with CGI mini-Snoop children and his kitchen-counter conversation with a high-fiving turtle?
The shellback's presence, it turns out, is the campaign's way of underscoring the lessened environmental impact of making your own fizzy water at home instead of buying it. The Snoop-as-a-centaur painting? Your guess is as good as mine. But, like the kitchen turtle, it's an image that'll stick with you long after your home-bubbled bottle of water has gone flat.
Over the years, he's appeared in ad campaigns for (or launched collaborations with) a walk-in closet's worth of apparel brands from Cross Colours (1993) to Gucci (2024). But the one that gets my up-vote for the most delightfully whackadoodle is an ad for the Gap Inc.-owned Old Navy brand that has Snoop Dogg bound to a chair and being held hostage — by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Kumail Nanjiani, no less — for $1 million.
The surreal high jinks include a discussion about pastries ('Man, those are profiteroles. I made 'em myself,' Snoop tells a noshing Nanjiani. 'Can you taste the vanilla in 'em?'), the definition of the word 'fortnight' and most important, the key detail that Old Navy customers waiting in line for the 2015 holiday-season Black Friday sale could win $1 million. That's right, all that star power — and Snoop tied to a chair — just to advertise waiting in line.
Although he's pitched all manner of foodstuffs on behalf of others (Tostitos, Jack in the Box Munchie Meals, delivery service Grubhub) and launched his own products (ice cream brand Dr. Bombay and a line of breakfast cereals), his ad for the Nestlé-owned Hot Pocket brand of microwavable hand pies takes the (hash) cake.
That's all because the music video-style ad featuring DeStorm and Andy Milonakis includes Snoop rapping a parody version of his 2004 hit 'Drop It Like It's Hot' called 'Pocket Like It's Hot' (sample lyrics: 'So don't change the dizzle, turn it up a lizzle / Got some cheesy drizzle dripping on my shizzle').
In what might be one of the most 'What were they thinking?' endorsement deals of all time, Norton enlisted the rapper in its fight against cybercrime. The partnership makes a little more sense when you put it in the context of promoting a contest called 'Hack Is Wack,' which asked creators to submit two-minute rap videos on cybersecurity threats — think hacking, identity-theft viruses and the like. What was in it for the winner? A trip to L.A. to meet with Snoop's management, two tickets to a Snoop Dogg concert and a new laptop with Norton antivirus software. Wack indeed.
In 2008, long before he was in heavy rotation as a T-Mobile spokesdogg, Snoop appeared in an ad for German cellphone provider Vybe Mobile that might just rank as the most bizarre commercial of his career to date. It begins with a Lego pirate riding on the back of a turtle (what's with Snoop and turtles?) across a kitchen floor as a bored, shorts-wearing 20-something gazes with ennui at his phone. Suddenly, music starts and a lounge-lizard version of Snoop steps into the kitchen — from inside the refrigerator. He's sporting a dark side-part wig and sunglasses and is kitted out in a black tuxedo. One hand clutches a microphone. He begins to sing — in German — 'Schön ist es auf der Welt zu sein' ('It's nice to be in the world'), the signature song of the late German folk singer Roy Black, whom Snoop may be (or may be not) channeling.
As in most ads featuring Snoop, zaniness ensues: Suds-covered women crawl out of the dishwasher, a pair of piano players appear out of nowhere and the bored 20-something becomes no longer bored. A dancing suds gal holds up a card referencing the costs and benefits of Vybe's offer and boom! In 50 seconds, the ad ends. But the questions? They'll remain with you forever.