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Huggies Case Study: How to Elicit Natural Storytelling for Maximum Impact

Authors: Kristen Matthews Kristen Matthews
Posted Under: Social Media
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Huggies Case Study: How to Elicit Natural Story Telling for Maximum Impact
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Social Influencer Case StudyWhen I was at The Marketing to Moms Conference in Chicago earlier this month, I was impressed with some exemplary case studies and thought leadership present. All representing some fine outreach marketing strategies.

An intrinsic piece of great marketing that we stress at GroupHigh is honing in on the value of acquiring and creating authentic content and fostering a genuine love of one’s brand.

Without this crucial backbone, marketing with influencers is moot.

I always like to remind everyone that you’re not marketing your brand, rather, an experience with your brand.

I was fortunate enough to sit in on a talk from Kendra Simpson of Ogilvy on how she and her team ran a phenomenal outreach campaign for their client, Huggies.

A Solid Goal

Huggies and Ogilvy set out with a goal to establish a connection with expectant moms. To engage with them before they had their babies.

There is great value in planning ahead. Be on the minds of your target consumers in a way that emotionally connects with them before they are making their purchase decisions.

Spoiler alert: Olgilvy accomplished this goal by planning ahead with smashing success for Huggies.

They planned to create a video portraying a true story that captured the raw experience of motherhood. This video was to be paired with native and word of mouth advertising techniques that would serve as the backbone of the campaign.

Through their campaign, “Delivering Hugs,” Huggies and Ogilvy created a viral video that triggered an emotional response from anyone with a soul—especially expecting mothers.

Locating the Perfect Real Stories

To find the right story for their video, Ogilvy worked with Baby Center to reach out to expecting moms and collect stories about their upcoming family additions to use in their video content.

Of the many amazing stories they gathered, one that really spoke to them was from an expecting mother who wanted her sister to be there for the birth of her son.

Unfortunately, her sister couldn’t afford the travel expenses.

Thus, Huggies ended up surprising the new mom with the arrival of her sister in the delivery room and captured it all on film to create a video viewed by millions.

At the conference, they shared the video which had half of the room in tears—proving that the video did it’s job.

You definitely want to check out the video here.

Finding the Right Sharers and Showing Them Some Love

Obviously, a phenomenal video isn’t enough to make a campaign successful.

It has to be placed in front of people with a reach and voice to talk about the “awesomeness.” If not, it’s like that whole tree falling in a forest analogy. It took place, but no one heard it so who cares?

Don’t let your video be the awesome tree that makes a glorious thud in the forest that no one knows about.

To find the right sharers of their Hugs Delivered video, Kendra and her social team placed the video on YouTube and Facebook and incentivized sharing of the video through offering coupons for money off diapers.

To utilize the tactic of showing appreciation for brand fans who help spread a message, a limb of this campaign was that every time someone used the hashtag #HugsDelivered, Huggies donated diapers to the National Diaper Bank Network to help babies in need.

Social Presence Isn’t Enough to Keep an Audience Engaged

One of the things that resonated with me from hearing Kendra talk about her campaign is that social presence is not enough to keep an engaged audience.

More than traffic, followers, and social footprint, social initiatives should focus first and foremost on content that is not self-serving.

To increase brand engagement, the content should encompass an experience pertaining to a brand and cater toward the audience.

“I think Hugs Delivered really validated what strong creative content and a compelling call-to-action can do for a brand’s social embassy,” Kendra explained when I talked to her after the campaign.

“You can have a million plus fans, but if you are only offering self-serving content, there is no reason for your fans/followers to engage.”

I love this case study because it really demonstrates the value of authenticity and natural storytelling. Whether you’re marketing to moms, tweens, lumberjacks or single men—this example of great outreach marketing reminds us to keep one simple fact in mind. Just market to humans as another human. It really is as simple as that.

Do you have a great outreach marketing example? I’m a case study junkie and would love to hear about your example in the comments. Let’s collaborate!

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