Rascal + Friends social and digital strategy has been integral to their mission to become a key player and industry leader, and attract new customers globally.
In early 2021, as TikTok emerged as a cultural phenomenon, only a handful of diaper brands had taken notice and made the move to the platform. Rascal + Friends, however, wasted no time in jumping on board, quickly establishing themselves as a leader in the diaper category on TikTok. By exploring unconventional avenues that more established, traditional players in the industry had yet to venture into, Rascal + Friends saw an opportunity to set the standard for engaging with their audience and creating edgy, trending content that would propel brand growth.
Rascal + Friends began with the goal of leading the way on the platform and connecting with their transitioning audience, specifically mothers. To achieve this, they utilized grassroots tactics and created authentic, unfiltered content that resonated with parents while emphasizing customer service and outreach. By continuously testing, learning, and adapting their content to suit the platform, they gained traction and a rapidly growing following of engaged parents, experiencing viral success on numerous occasions. Today, their TikTok strategy has evolved into a key component of their marketing mix, enabling them to create both organic and paid content, collaborate with UGC creators, and generate word of mouth, reviews, and overall brand excitement. Paid full-funnel campaigns and boosting third-party creator content play a critical role in this strategy, an integral part of their broader omnichannel strategy.
In their mission to dominate and become the #1 diaper brand on the platform, Rascal + Friends strategically capitalized on their existing brand tactics and affinity, translating this to be fit for the platform. Their dedicated team continually seek opportunities to reach new audiences, experience virality, grow brand affinity and ultimately increase conversion and sales.
Leverage TikTok features and trends
The scrappy, authentic nature of TikTok allowed Rascal + Friends to unanimously carry across their cheeky, playful ethos to resonate with niche platform audiences, experience virality and boost their brand affinity. They create entertaining, engaging content that aligns with topical trends, while honoring a customer-first approach to integrate informative messaging that is relevant to their product/brand.
Collaborating with influencers and brand partners
Executing a global seeding campaign to support the launch of their partnership with CoComelon, to spread mass awareness and build foundations for continued relationships. Community outreach is central to their strategy, as their team radically seek opportunities to connect with big-name influencers, brand advocates, niche professionals and other partners in the industry, helping to tap into followings and align the Rascal + Friends brand respectively. They also work closely with onboarded teams on a gifted and paid basis to complete content requests, which are amplified across their channel.
Promoting experimental user-generated content (UGC)
Actively work with, brief and incentivise creators to produce relevant branded content native to the platform, such as nursery restocks, in-store journeys, TikTok trends, and product experiments. A highlight of this strategy is the viral diaper ‘pour test’ - a challenge encouraging users to pour cups of liquid onto the diaper, highlighting Rascal + Friends superior absorbency compared to other brands. Content is monitored and compiled into a bank to amplify and share across other brand platforms, assets and campaigns, leveraging third-party creativity and credibility.
Community outreach and customer service
Honoring their original grassroots mission and brand ethos, Rascal + Friends prioritize best-in-class customer service and support for their community. After noticing a trend of TikTok parents hosting their own diaper drives, they jumped at the opportunity to join the conversation and help out too. Through the power of TikTok, their community tagged them in videos with the hashtag #diaperdrive and #diaperdonation, helping them to donate over 10,000 diapers to families in need. They also actively engage and communicate with comments in a prompt, informative yet playful and personable way, forming positive customer experiences led by a customer-first strategy.
Analyzing and optimizing performance
Continuously testing content to identify what works best and adjusting content and paid campaign strategy accordingly.
Challenges include:
As visibility and virality on TikTok increase, so do customer interactions, posing a challenge for community management, which remains a top priority for the brand.
The platform's limitations, including metrics, ad-targeting, and the ability to convey complex messages, are in contrast with those of more established social media platforms.
Maintaining brand authenticity and prioritising key messages, without avoiding an overly-advertising-centric approach can be challenging, especially as TikTok is a entertainment platform first and foremost.
Rascal + Friends TikTok strategy has evolved as a core component of their marketing mix, and had a strong influence on how other brands in the industry behave on platform. It’s not hard to see why they’ve been named the “TikTok viral diaper brand”(News Direct, 2022), “the most talked about disposable diaper” (Baby List, 2022) and a “brilliant example of how brands can stay on trend, even with a product that can be less ‘trendy’ to talk about” (Wavemaker, 2022).
Since their debut in 2021, they have:
Cemented their position as the most-liked and followed diaper brand on TikTok, for the second year in a row!
Built a cult-like community of over 114,000 followers
Received over 2.3M likes of their videos
Average +150 thousands minutes of R+F content watched monthly
Generated +148 million impressions in 2022
+268 million views of the #rascalandfriends hashtag
Owned and experienced huge levels of virality with the diaper pour test trend, which generated +21% increase in sales WoW
Collaborated with household names in the industry, including Maia Knight, Whitney Leavitt, Karalea Pior, Shaaanxo, Sophie Clark and even Laine - the famous shoulder-dancing baby!
Received global headline features dedicated solely to their TikTok strategy, including Baby List, News Direct and Wavemaker
Lead and owned the hashtags #diaperdonation (an increase from 800 to 675.8k views) and #diaperdrive (totalling to 1.2M views where 4 @rascalandfriends videos were included in the top 5)
Built credible and long-lasting relationships with foster/diaper drive Moms with a combined following of 2.8M
