Background/Context

“Sell more active baby diapers by convincing moms that Huggies has the best diapers for moving babies.”

Pampers are the number 1 brand of diaper in South Africa. Huggies wanted to use their active diapers to drive trial, brand affinity and ultimately sales. The campaign needed to over index on creativity to ensure that the lighter comparative media and production spend could break through and land with mothers.

Creative Challenge

This campaign had to use an existing product with no new innovation. From a performance point of view, our functional benefits are on par with Pampers Active Baby. There was no novel innovation that drove campaign success.

Solution

To prove just how much babies can move in a day, to put the comfort and fit of Huggies diapers to the test, and to clearly demonstrate why these nappies are the best choice for active babies, we chose four babies and gave them an audacious goal: 21 adult-length kilometers.

Our custom-made distance-tracking device - Thanks to the data collected by the babies’ custom-designed distance-tracking devices, our little athletes were able to race one another on our online race course, in real time, from the comfort of their own homes. Their progress was packaged as a series of highlights videos, which were released across multiple digital platforms, until the first baby crossed the finish line 5.8 days later.

Execution

Part experiment, part product-demo, part web series, The World’s First Baby Marathon was a digital activation and web series, that was basically a wall-to-wall product demo, but delivered in a way that entertained and engaged moms.

The marathon unfolded in real time for 13 days, with the first baby crossing the finish line in 5.8 days. The campaign was promoted across multiple digital and social platforms (Facebook, search, mobile/premium display and YouTube) for 9 weeks in total.

This included a three-week teaser phase (28 Aug 2017) to build our audience, two weeks of real-time marathon (18 September 2017), and a four-week sum-up of the campaign.

During our teaser phase, we also used limited TV and cinema support, as well as targeted in-store promotion. The campaign consisted of our campaign page, 1 X 75 second promo film, 3 X 10 second teaser films, various promoted ‘teaser’ social posts (profiles of our four babies, baby warm-ups, a countdown timer, etc) and an in-store and online competition where parents could win branded Huggies World’s First Baby Marathon gear for both themselves and their babies.

The result was a hugely entertaining, enormously engaging campaign, that convincingly demonstrated how Huggies® Gold and Pants are the best diapers for when babies become mobile, providing babies with the comfort and confidence to get out there and engage with the world.

The take-out was perfectly aligned to the physical and emotional needs of both babies and their moms. After all, if Huggies® Gold and Pants are comfortable enough for your baby to participate in what equates to an adult half marathon, they are comfortable enough to wear every day.