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It takes nine months to make a baby\u2014and, evidently, to turn around a baby brand\u2019s social media strategy.<\/p>\n
Last year, the team at Frida, which sells products for babies and their parents alike, found that the curated, graphic-centric content that was successful on Instagram 10 years ago just wasn\u2019t resonating with today\u2019s parents. So, last summer, it tapped branding expert Ashwinn Krishnaswamy, who has built a following on TikTok posting about marketing and design, to help build a new organic video strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn issue that so many companies have is they think about Instagram and this highly curated, highly polished era,\u201d Krishnaswamy told Marketing Brew. \u201cNow, the nature of social has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first video he worked on with the brand that posted last June, which shows a product that helps babies\u2026relieve themselves, has gotten more than 2.5 million views. Since then, Frida has continued to post content that leaves little to the imagination, and has racked up more than 110 million organic views in the process, Krishnaswamy said. Frida\u2019s two separate TikTok accounts, @fridababy and @fridamom, have a combined 257k followers. And as multiple product videos have gone viral, Amazon sales and traffic have also increased for the brand, Samantha Yehle, director of social at Frida, told Marketing Brew.<\/p>\n
The positive response to the brand being more creative\u2014and even a little shocking\u2014in its in-house content means that Frida\u2019s marketing team \u201chas completely rewritten the way that we approach social,\u201d both on TikTok and Instagram, Yehle said.<\/p>\n
Common medical conditions like cradle cap and perineal tears might not seem like great artistic opportunities, but Yehle said that Krishnaswamy advised the brand to embrace the \u201chighly visual\u201d nature of its products and the situations they can address, which ended up being a win-win for audience engagement and her team\u2019s entertainment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can literally show you how to suck snot out of a fake baby\u2019s nose with gummy bears,\u201d Yehle said. \u201cThere were so many fun ways that we used props to illustrate how these products work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prior to this campaign, Yehle said Frida was leaning on UGC videos on TikTok. By creating in-house content that focused on the very real (and sometimes very graphic) realities of being the parent of a newborn, she said it not only got the creative juices flowing, but also helped boost engagement through strong visual hooks. The cradle-cap video, which demonstrates how to use Frida\u2019s 3-Step Cradle Cap Removal System using a combination of cereal and peanut butter applied to a baby doll\u2019s head, resulted in more than 1,200 comments, one of which compared the cereal-and-peanut-butter concoction to a Ferrero Rocher, Yehle said.<\/p>\n
Close to 30% of Frida\u2019s TikTok viewers are between 18 and 23 years old, and while it might seem outside of the brand\u2019s target demo, Yehle said appealing to Gen Z is a way to build awareness with the next generation of parents.<\/p>\n
Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cIf we were making these very stiff, sort of sweet parenting videos like, \u2018Here are three tips for how to deal with your baby\u2019s cradle cap,\u2019 there\u2019s no way an 18-year-old kid with no kids is gonna watch that,\u201d she said. \u201cBut our videos are like, \u2018What the hell am I looking at right now?\u2019…so we get the best of the comment game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frida\u2019s social team often responds to comments via reply videos, some of which have gone viral even when the video they\u2019re replying to hasn\u2019t, Yehle said. While there was talk at one point of involving creators, it became clear after the first viral video that a witty voice and materials from the office kitchen could do the trick, she said.<\/p>\n
Why put so much emphasis on organic content from the get-go? In Krishnaswamy\u2019s opinion, a video that has lots of views but significantly fewer likes is an indication that it\u2019s not something people want to watch\u2014meaning that paid didn\u2019t make sense to him in this case, even if it\u2019s the norm among brands.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should be able to make a piece of content that is good, that is either a sales driver or brand awareness driver, and it should perform on its own,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce it performs, then we can figure out the paid strategy with the insights there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frida has used top-performing organic videos for paid ads on platforms like Instagram and Facebook, Yehle said, and to date, most organic videos that have done well on TikTok have also done well on Instagram\u2014save for a recent video on the brand\u2019s Push Pop Feeder, which she said was the first to receive more views (and likes) on Instagram.<\/p>\n
Because the brand\u2019s president, Eric Hirschhorn, is who brought Krishnaswamy in, Yehle told us, executive trust in the process has been high, which she doesn\u2019t take for granted.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur leadership being like, \u2018You guys got this. Run with it,\u2019 is very, very cool and, I think, very rare from all of the social media manager commentary I see on LinkedIn,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been insulated in a very important way.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Frida\u2019s marketing team continues to experiment, Yehle said they\u2019re looking at creating more content about office culture and doing more giveaways, like a recent prize wheel in which customers\u2019 baby-shower invites were entered into a drawing to receive Frida products. The question at the center of those efforts, she said, is, \u201cHow can we find ways to take super social, insight-driven ideas and execute them to build brand affinity more and to continue to have fun?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n