Background to the Project

WaterWipes, the world’s purest baby wipes, is a challenger brand in a category of big players. With brands such as Pampers and Huggies investing heavily in paid media, WaterWipes couldn’t compete on awareness through paid media alone. Without the budget to buy attention, we needed to earn it by disrupting the category.

Our objectives were simple: to drive awareness and an increase in sales in eight core markets. To do this, we didn’t need to look further for inspiration than the category and social media which were filled with glossy ads and posts featuring perfect parents and babies. We thought – what new parents’ life looks like that!? And so - #ThIsisParenthood was born.

We started by commissioning global research which revealed that more than half of parents worldwide feel like they are failing in the first year. This universal insight was the catalyst for the #thisisparenthood.

The #thisisparenthood project looked to dispel the myth of ‘perfect parenting’ and change the conversation by bringing a uniquely honest perspective, whilst creating meaningful connections with other mums and dads experiencing the same journey around the world.. Built for parents, by parents such as director Lucy Cohen, the project featured real parents via a documentary approach making it hyper-relevant to our audience.

We launched #ThisIsParenthood – a content-fuelled conversation on social media – by putting real parents at the heart of the campaign. Using a documentary-style production approach, we followed 86 mums and dads around the world on their journey through the first year of parenthood as they talked openly about the highs and lows. These stories are captured in a 16-minute documentary, 13 short films on taboo subjects, 36 Instagram stories and a suite of photography that aims to portray real parenting like never before. The project also features hero OOH placements across train stations in the UK and a feature piece in Times square that looks to disrupt traditional glossy broadcast formats with honest parenting.

To be efficient with our spend, our media needed to be hyper-targeted too. We avoided the broadcast formats of competitors, instead using data driven distribution to place our content in the places and spaces in which parents were already having peer-to-peer conversations.

The project was distributed primarily via Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, as well as through PPC, time-targeted programmatic display, OOH and earned press coverage. Parenting influencers and Health Care Professionals also shared their own honest moments to spread the conversation to a hyper-relevant audience, whilst baby shows were used to bring the message to parents face-to-face. WaterWipes.com also housed a project hub that brought to life the mission of the project.

By documenting the realities of parenting worldwide whilst our competitors and social media were still pushing this ‘picture perfect parenting’ myth, we were able to rise above the noise of the category and build a meaningful connection between the brand and our audience that we never would have been able to generate with traditional advertising or paid media alone.

Results

Our objective was to drive awareness, setting ourselves targets in the first 4 months since launch we have seen huge success:

• A 6% uplift in awareness amongst parents vs. target

• 1.7b parents reached globally (+2515% vs. target)

• 139K earned engagements (+1100% vs. target)

• 7000 pieces of UGC content from parents

• A 7% uplift in consideration

• 55K clicks to the WaterWipes website

• YouTube View Through rate reached 28.8%

• Over 1,300 views on our 3am Live Instagram with Scummy Mummies

But above all, #ThisIsParenthood has changed the conversation amongst real parents.

Through our unique honesty, we gave parents from the US to the UAE the space to open up through DMs and comments, where hundreds shared their own intimate stories:

• “It’s been a rollercoaster. The worry, the lack of sleep (god that’s so hard), the sickness, being *ON* 24/7, the juggling, the guilt”

• “Behind the photos I post the truth is I haven’t had a single minute to myself for weeks now”

• “There is no filter, no prep, just us.”

Parents also acknowledged the change in conversation, celebrating the honesty:

• "I wish I'd seen a campaign like this BEFORE I had a baby"

• "This is truly what every parent needs! Sometimes we need all the reassurance we can get to be able to cope with this new life, to know we're not alone"

• "How could we not share this. Empowering. Inspiring. Re-post @waterwipes"