ADFX Awards

DATABANK

Ideas and Evidence for Marketing People

WaterWipes: How showing ineffectiveness proved to be dramatically effective

DDFH&B and OMD Ireland

Introduction & Background

The story of WaterWipes demonstrates the effectiveness of advertising in its purest form – i.e. take a great product, bring it to the masses in the right way and watch demand become so great that you have to build a brand new factory just to keep up with it! To fully appreciate the story of the brand, we need to first briefly tell the story of the man behind it – Louth native Edward McCloskey.

Edward’s father set up the Boyne Valley group, so Edward grew up in a culture that encouraged entrepreneurial spirit. From early on in his career, he constantly strived to develop new products and new solutions for problems that, in most cases, had gone unrecognised by others. The quest that led to WaterWipes was no different. It began in 2006 when Edward became a parent and his daughter suffered with severe nappy rash. This prompted the always-inquisitive Edward to investigate what was actually in the baby wipes his family was using. He was horrified to discover that even wipes claiming to be pure or for sensitive skin were choc full of chemicals. He wanted a chemical-free wipe and when he couldn’t find one, he set about inventing it.

Four intense years working with scientists, dermatologists and microbiologists led Edward to a major discovery - that by modifying the properties of water and making the H20 molecule clusters smaller, they could in fact penetrate the dirt on the skin more easily and therefore naturally clean it. This had never been done before in the baby wipes category and it led to the birth of WaterWipes; a revolutionary product that was a world’s first, so build it and they will come, right? Not exactly.

In 2015, having been in multiples for four years but only showing modest growth, the decision was taken to advertise WaterWipes for the first time. We were a tiny brand with a budget to match and we were going up against a fiercely competitive market dominated by familiar, trusted and big-spending brands – heavyweight household names like Pampers and J&J. And if that wasn’t difficult enough, WaterWipes came with a premium price tag that required consumers to pay up to three times as much as the competition in a heavily discounted category.

Marketing Objectives

WaterWipes is the only wipe made to a pharmaceutical grade and, because the technology required to do this is relatively complicated, they are more expensive to produce and so more expensive to buy. At its full retail price of €2.99, it can be up to three times as expensive to buy as Private Label. To support this substantial price premium, it made sense to initially launch WaterWipes through the pharmacy market. By 2011, it was distributed in multiples and did modestly well with almost 6% market share five years after it was launched. In 2015, however, Edward and the brand team decided it was time for WaterWipes to take the plunge and try to make a splash in the Irish market by embarking on a first-time advertising campaign with the following objectives.

 

Commercial Objectives:

  • Increase sales and grow market share from 5.8% to 12% in Ireland and from 0.4% to 1% in the UK[1] - ambitious targets for a relative unknown in Ireland and a complete unknown in the UK; two fiercely competitive marketplaces.
  • Maintain the brand’s price premium - a critical KPI because WaterWipes are a small business, far smaller than their competitors, and the ability of the brand to succeed was dependent on protecting their price premium going forward.
  • Maintain engagement and purchase off-promotion and in doing so, reduce the dependency on, and number of, promotions that WaterWipes had to run during the year as, given the size of WaterWipes, the brand could no longer afford to promote as heavily or as frequently as its behemoth competitors.
  • Although not a primary KPI, it was hoped that if communications delivered as intended, the success in this market would help with growth and distribution of WaterWipes in the UK.

 

Marketing objectives:

  • Create a compelling brand for WaterWipes, which heretofore hadn’t got one.
  • And create an idea to launch it. One that would bring the brand’s USP and the brand’s personality to life in a convincing and different way. 
  • Appeal to mums-to-be and new mums with a view to disrupting existing preferences and ensuring that WaterWipes were more top of mind, whilst being very careful not to make mums feel bad about their previous choices.
  •  Protect the brand against a historical purchasing drop-off that occurred around the 4-6 month mark by driving engagement (either emotional or rational) with mum so that she became more bonded to the brand before she started to emerge from the ‘new baby haze’, and was more susceptible to switching based on price and a belief that her baby’s skin was less sensitive.

 

The Role for communications:

Given these clearly stated (albeit ambitious) objectives, the role for communications was two-fold:

  1. Create clear blue water between WaterWipes and everybody else by communicating the brand’s unambiguous differences and by repositioning the competition in the process.
  2. And convey to ‘mum’, in the right way and in the right tone of voice, that these differences – rational and emotional - were meaningful and worth paying a premium for.
 

[1] UK = United Kingdom.

The Task

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…” Theodore Roosevelt.

This was no easy task, but it was one we relished because we believed in the brilliance of the product and the promise of the brand. A promise that, if communicated right, had the potential to help WaterWipes take a hearty bite out of the baby wipe[1] market worth €11.54m in IRL[2] and £184m[3] in the UK. 

The size of the prize was enticing; however, this was a market dominated by four indomitable powers – Private Label, J&J, Huggies and Pampers – and WaterWipes was small fry by comparison.

Private Label led the market charge and, in March 2015, it had a whopping 52.7% volume share in multiples. J&J and Pampers, two hugely trusted household names in Ireland, had 25% and 4.1% respectively.

FIGURE 1

In 2014, J&J unsurprisingly had 98% SOV[4] of the Baby Wipes category and WaterWipes was responsible for the other 2%[5]

FIGURE 2

These figures show what WaterWipes was up against, but they don’t tell the full story. The Baby Wipes category, as distinct from the broader Baby Care category, is a small-spending one with just under €90k spent that year. Those figures also mask the brand presence and influence of Pampers which dominated the wider Baby Care category, where spends were more than 7 times that of wipes alone.

So, to better understand the degree to which WaterWipes was being outshouted, it is more accurate to look at SOV in that broader Baby Care market. Doing so demonstrates the almighty strength of J&J and Pampers – Pampers had 85% SOV, J&J had 14%, Huggies had the other 1% and WaterWipes… well, WaterWipes had a big fat 0%[6].

FIGURE 3

Pampers and J&J not only had multiple skews of baby wipes; they also had multiple skews in the broader Baby Care category which they supported ATL, each skew helping to build those brands – their familiarity, stature, the trust and credibility that was so important when it came to brands for baby. WaterWipes, conversely, had but one lone product, and an unknown brand to drive it.

FIGURE 4

WaterWipes’ premium pricing was a real challenge too, given the commoditisation of the baby wipes market and the drift towards Private Label as an increasingly acceptable, sometimes even desirable, solution. WaterWipes was up to three times more expensive than Private Label which meant that, in essence, we were asking people to pay up to €2 more a week with limited established difference. Even assuming a modest purchase rate of 2.9 packs a week, this equated to an ask of €300 more a year[7]!

And all other branded offerings, particularly J&J, Huggies and Pampers, heavily promoted throughout the year with the category norm being 6-8 promotions apiece, educating consumers to buy on price all the while. In fact, research revealed that half our target audience switched on price and only one-third claimed any kind of brand loyalty.

The influence of Private Label at one end of the spectrum, and deeply discounted branded heavyweights at the other, created a price pincer effect that meant stealing market share was going to be incredibly tough for the relatively costly and unknown WaterWipes.

Perhaps the budget for the campaign could help neutralise some of these obstacles? No. Like the brand, the budget was tiny, so we had to make sure we made one hell of an impact with our brand positioning and our comms. No pressure, then!

 

[1] We do not have the relavant, much larger, figure for the broader Baby Care category.

[2] IRL = Ireland.

[3] Both figures for IRL and UK exclude online, pharmacy, specialty and convenience stores. Hence, they represent a lower than actual number, but this is the best estimate we have based on Nielsen.

[4] SOV = Share of Voice

[5] Source:  Nielsen.

[6] Source:  Nielsen and Addynamics.

[7] Modestly assuming 2.9 packs (five changes a day using five wipes per change by seven days a week divided by an average of 60 wipes per pack) X 52 weeks  = 150.8 packs per year.  As WaterWipes retails at up to €2 more than Private Label, this means we are asking customers to pay up to €301.60 more a year vs competitor offerings.

The Strategy

Given the big tasks in hand and the little monies in pocket, not only did we have to find a way to communicate our differences in an unambiguous and significant manner, but in a way that would effectively reposition the competition too. We needed to convey that not all wipes are created equally; there are wipes and then there are WaterWipes, the benefits of which are worth paying more attention to and a bit more money for.

As a product, WaterWipes was in a league of its own; it was the only chemical-free wipe available. This clear and differentiated claim gave rise to WaterWipes’ clear and differentiated proposition – The World’s Purest Wipe. Compelling, simple, true. We couldn’t outspend the competition. We could out-best them. But to really make a dent, we had to out-brand them too. This was particularly important in a commodotised market.

We knew ‘why’ WaterWipes was created, ‘how’ it was created and ‘what’ the product offering was, but we needed to crack the ‘who’ of WaterWipes – the brand, what it stood for and why mum should care - if we were to really compete in a category that traded on trust, something J&J, Pampers and Huggies had an abundance of. 

We had a great product story to tell, but without a trusted brand to tell it, it would fall on deaf ears.

We did some quantitative and qualitative research[1] in Ireland and the UK prior to campaign development, and the insights garnered helped shape ‘who’ WaterWipes could be and what role it could credibly play in consumers’ lives.

It was clear from this research that being a new mum could be a really anxious time. Mums were bombarded with advice and information about how to be a ‘good mum’ and this onslaught - no matter how well-intentioned - exacerbated anxiety and left them feeling confused and guilty.

This presented a real opportunity for WaterWipes to step into the breach at this point and, in the midst of the guilt and confusion, offer mum some much needed simplicity, and in essence, guilt alleviation. The brand’s USP – as pure as cotton wool and water in the convenience of a wipe – being a guilt-free, no compromise wipe solution meant we had the legitimacy to do this. And once these benefits were made clear, mums were literally queuing up to pay a premium for the emotional relief and peace of mind that WaterWipes offered them.

Recognising a role for WaterWipes within this very emotional space gave us, in addition to a cracking product USP, an emotional raison d’etre from which we could start to build a truly different and valuable brand. A brand with a purpose, a value system and a personality – stripped back, honest and ethical - that mums could trust and turn to. These values, the bedrock of the new brand, were central to the creative brief and influenced the delivery of all our comms.

 

[1] 4 groups in IRL and 4 in the UK.

The Idea

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way" John Maxwell

With the help of research, we had cultivated a WaterWipes brand. We also had a brand proposition – The World’s Purest. Now we needed a campaign idea that would bring our brand and proposition to life, and one that would resonate with parents and make them think twice about what they were using on their baby’s skin. Doing this too overtly would rail against our new brand personality, and just waxing lyrical about the product’s virtues would not be enough to make the impact or force the reassessment required.

And then it hit us... The big idea that drove the ‘World’s Purest Baby Wipes’ campaign emerged when our creative department started to really interrogate how other brands of wipes were currently being used. In addition to wiping baby’s bums, other wipes were being used in a multitude of ways – removing stains, cleaning cookers, removing make-up – but, surely products that contained enough chemicals to do these jobs effectively were not the best thing to use on newborn skin – skin five times more delicate than ours?

The creatives’ insight presented us with the perfect campaign platform – we could demonstrate what WaterWipes CANNOT do to showcase our superiority in purity – both rationally and emotionally. We believed that ‘showing’, rather than ‘telling’, this difference was an important aspect of building credibility and trust for the WaterWipes brand. And that doing a product ‘demo’ to demonstrate just how ineffective it was (as a household cleaner) felt like something very unconventional that would really create much needed standout and traction.

And so, our campaign set about dramatising the rational differences of the brand by firstly, showing what we DIDN’T do versus what all the other wipes could. WaterWipes couldn't remove stains or marks from walls. They could only work on babies’ skin. And secondly, by explaining that the reason for this was because WaterWipes was the only wipe that had just 2 natural ingredients.

We demonstrated our emotional difference in the autonomy we depicted throughout the campaign, most notably in TV - by clearly showing that our protagonist was a mum who had thought about the category and had made a confident decision, in both her hold and the way she carried the baby, and also in the way she demonstrates the product without any hyperbole, educating other mums on the product’s merits and thus providing them with the reassurance they needed that this was a choice they didn’t have to feel guilty about.

The tone of voice we adopted - which was a gentle sharing of valuable information that parents would be interested in, rather than being overly authoritative or patronising - was another key indication to consumers that WaterWipes was emotionally different to all the rest. With our tone, we intended outshouting the competition by not shouting at all! We wanted our comms to make mums feel like ‘better mums’, not to add to their anxiety or make them feel bad about the choices they had made up until that point.

Everything in the campaign, across all touchpoints, was kept natural and stripped back, just like the brand itself. 

 

Channel Planning:

Subsequent to the launch in March, we had free reign to phase the advertising to drive the best return for WaterWipes. To achieve this, we built the plan around two planning principles:

  1. Identifying audience insights that would increase advertising impact and relevance
  2. Identifying seasonal shifts in media value to optimise investment, driving greater advertising spend efficiency

First, the insights:

Annual Baby Boom

  • Irish people are creatures of habit, and baby-making (luckily for us) is no exception! In the four years previous to our launch, September had consistently been the busiest month for births in Ireland.

New Baby Bubble

  • ‘Very new mothers’ are incredibly difficult to reach with advertising messages. Their world naturally becomes consumed by the new baby in their lives, so they have far less time and headspace to digest any advertising messages in a truly meaningful way at that time.

Nesting

  • In the last trimester of pregnancy, the ‘nesting’ instinct starts to set in. This typically sets in just before the baby arrives, and is the phase where expectant mothers start to prepare the house and stockpile for the arrival of the new baby.

These three insights were used to identify the most impactful time of year to be live with the second burst of our campaign – June / July 2015.

Another thing to consider, on top of the most relevant months to be active, was which months provided the best value. This was particularly relevant for TV, where the cost fluctuates each month. 

The below chart illustrates month by month the number of eyeballs delivered vs the corresponding cost of buying TV at that time. This was used to identify months that provided value, but also balanced this with audience size. 

FIGURE 5

We knew that the June / July timeframe was critical from a planning perspective, but because June was expensive, we focused all of the TV spend for that period into July.

 

FIGURE 6

Two channels dominated new and expectant mothers’ media consumption - TV and digital.

TV was dedicated 70% share of the budget because mums with young babies consume a much higher proportion of their media within the home, and this medium is still the best channel for building fame and emotion (Binet & Field 2013).

Mums with young babies also spent a disproportionately high volume of time on digital platforms (20.9 hours per week v 18.8 for all adults[1]). Through this channel, we could add further depth and relevance to the WaterWipes story.

 

Media Plan Summary – Total spend €182,795

FIGURE 7

On TV, we identified that the optimum number of times for the target audience to see the ad was four. We then identified the TV stations which had the strongest reach and profile for both women 25-44 and housekeepers with children. Finally, we tweaked station combinations and weekly weights until we had the ideal mix – one that delivered the optimum cover for the lowest cost.

The other lead media channel was digital. The bursts were focused on driving mass awareness with women 25-44 / housekeepers using high-impact display and video creative, while the ‘always on’ activity was focused on identifying expectant mothers and tightly targeting them.

The bursts were across all devices and across all the top-visited websites for this audience. The most unique element of the campaign, though, was our use of programmatic. Programmatic digital is basically automated digital ad placement technology that allows advertisers to target very specific users with very specific messages. Using cookie tracking, we were able to identify in real time users exhibiting behaviours consistent with ‘being pregnant’. They may have been searching for information about pregnancy on Google, or visiting sites about maternity hospitals online. As a result of these behaviours, we identified them as a user who we wanted to talk to, and in less than 200 milliseconds, we had served them a WaterWipes ad.

FIGURE 8

 

[1] ROI TGI Population Survey, 2015

The Results

Results - both intended and unforeseen - exceeded all of our expectations. Of course we would say that, but really, they did - so much so that, to keep up with demand created, production went from one to four packs per second and a new 45,000 sq. ft. factory needed to be built! But back to that later.

Considering objectives as outlined:

 

Commercial:

Increase sales and grow market share – IRL and UK :

Sales: +64% IRL and +55% UK. 

Revenue: +71% IRL and +82% UK.

Volume Share:

+7% IRL (exceeding our own targets by 1.1%)

+0.8% UK (0.2% over projections)

And, as illustrates, the biggest increases in share for IRL corresponds directly with our TV ad being on air.

FIGURE 9

As MAT figures for ROI and UK demonstrate, this growth is a longer-term trend.

FIGURE 10

FIGURE 11

Maintaining a price premium:

Value Share

Stealing market share in an established market was an achievement, but punching above its weight disproportionately in Value Share was more meaningful, as it meant that WaterWipes maintained its price premium – which was critical for a business of its size.

FIGURE 12

Momentously, in October 2015 WaterWipes achieved a Value Share of 25.2%, grabbing share from Private Label amongst others, and overtaking for the first time its mammoth rival J&J, which had 24.9%[1].

FIGURE 13

Whilst in the UK, Value Shares rose from 1.3% to 2.9% between January and October 2015, in a declining value market[2].

FIGURE 14

IRL and UK YOY[3] average MAT Value Share figures show this is a longer-term trend. In IRL, YOY MAT grew from 11.3% in 2014 to 20% in 2015 - WaterWipes was the only brand that had any significant growth in Value Share during that period. In the UK, YOY MAT grew from 0.9% to 2.1%[4]

FIGURE 15

FIGURE 16

WaterWipes’ Volume and Value Share growth is remarkable in the FMCG category, where the prevailing trend is a drift to Private Label.

Maintain engagement and purchase off-promotion; reduce dependency on, and number of, promotions:

We wanted to copper-fasten the brand as justifying a price premium and had a clear strategy to reduce our level of cost promotions. The category norm is 6-8 promotions a year. Post new campaign, WaterWipes reduced the number of promotions it ran from an average of 6 to 4 in 2015.

To run an average promotion in Irish multiples costs approximately €20k. Reducing promotions by two saved €40k for WaterWipes – half the cost of making the TV ad! 

Although not a primary KPI, it was hoped the success in IRL would help Water Wipes’ growth and distribution in the UK:

Campaign success in Ireland was used by the WaterWipes team to secure invaluable, and competitively fought for, listings in Asda and double the amount of listings in Tesco and Boots. 

 

Marketing:

 Create a compelling brand for WaterWipes and an idea to launch it.

The ‘What’ of WaterWipes achieved 13.2% Value Share, but it was by effectively creating and communicating the ‘Who’ for the brand that this figure was propelled to 25.2%. 

There was no budget, and therefore no research, to qualify or quantify the campaign’s impact, but the demand and sales generated on foot of it speak to landing a perceived product difference and justifying a price premium.

Appeal to new mums and protect against a historical purchasing drop-off by driving engagement:

In the absence of research, our large swathes of online reviews indicate that mums, our key target, are staying with the brand way beyond the 4-6 month mark. Below is a taster.

FIGURE 17

 

Additional results:

Boost to other media:

The campaign generated an estimated rate card value of €268,920[5] in free PR.

Online searches increased in both IRL and UK while the campaigns were active.

FIGURE 18

FIGURE 19

YOY website sessions in IRL increased by 60.17% and users have increased by 82.47%, whilst numbers of Twitter followers and Facebook fans grew.

FIGURE 20

FIGURE 21

An unexpected, albeit welcome, surge in demand:

The campaign created a demand that exceeded expectations to the point that production could not meet it[6]. To remedy this, production was increased from one to four packs every second! This fourfold increase in production[7] meant that Irish Breeze had to build a huge new 45,000 sq. ft. factory just to keep up. 

More jobs:

This extra demand has resulted in the workforce increasing from 15 to 90 and growing.

Global expansion:

WaterWipes’ success here has paved the way for its launch in Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, The Netherlands, Portugal, South Korea, Iceland, Hong Kong, Cyprus, UAE and Bulgaria. It’s even sold in Outer Mongolia!

Change in Company Culture:

A telling, albeit relatively modest, effect of the campaign is that Edward McCloskey, a former marketing ‘skeptic’, has backed his new belief in marketing by trebling marketing spend from 2015 to 2016. 

And, senior management, for the first time in the company’s history, selected ‘marketing’ as the highest focus area for future growth of the business.

FIGURE 22

 

Discounting other factors:

New product launches? No. WaterWipes was, and still is, a one-product-strong brand... for the moment!

The product’s natural superiority has been the same since it came in to being in 2010.

Pricing was the same pre, during and post campaign.

We had full distribution prior to the campaign so, other than a two-fold increase in shelf space post campaign on the back of its success, distribution didn’t change.

Did WaterWipes promote? Yes, but 2-4 times less in 2015 than the category norm.

New packaging packaging coincided with the launch of the campaign; however, this was a subtle evolution of the old pack and was unlikely to have contributed in any significant way to the uplift in sales. Even if we very generously attribute a 5% increase in revenue to this pack change, we still achieve a hugely impressive ROMI.

FIGURE 23

According to the CSO, birth rates in IRL declined last year for the third year in a row[8]; however, even had they increased, this would have been an opportunity for all players in the market, not just WaterWipes.

Our marketing strategy was to consciously increase spend to build our brand, and with 13% SOV of the wider Baby Care category, we achieved an impressive, trend-bucking, 12% increase in Value Share.

Isolating the effects of the advertising:

If ever more proof was necessary that advertising was what made the difference for WaterWipes, we have it thanks to a UK test case area. Before being rolled out nationwide, our TV campaign for WaterWipes ran for four weeks in a regional test area in the UK, and sales in Boots there were measured. From this, we can undeniably isolate the effects of the campaign. In that test area, Boots sales increased from 2.6% to 3.8%, an uplift of 1.2% as a direct result of just TV.

FIGURE 24

ROMI

Given our size, we don’t have the luxury of econometrics or tracking, but we have outlined the ROMI for WaterWipes as transparently as possible below, calculated according to increase in revenue[9] + savings to revenue – costs ÷ costs.

FIRST ROMI – ROMI in Ireland of 210.90%

Based on 64% increase in volume sales = 71% increase in revenue.

SECOND ROMI – Conservative Irish ROMI

Even if we were to ascribe an incredibly generous 5% of revenue to the subtle changes in packaging, we get an impressive ROMI of 198.85%.

THIRD ROMI – UK ROMI

From the outset, the intention was that any ad produced in Ireland would also have to work for the UK, and would be run there for efficiencies. Other than a few tweaks in production in the UK, the bulk of the WaterWipes campaign was produced in Ireland, resulting in real economies of scale and an incredibly positive impact on UK ROMI, which was 828.41%.

ROMI – the monetary value of jobs created

According to a European Study[10], an unemployed person can cost a state between €18,008 and €33,443 a year. Applying this logic, using the most conservative figure (for the UK), it is plausible to estimate that the 75 jobs created by WaterWipes have, at least, saved the Irish State in the region of €1,350,600 per annum.

 

[1] Source: Nielsen.

[2] Source: Nielsen.

[3] YOY = Year-on-Year

[4] Source: Nielsen.

[5] Based on a PR coverage figure of 71,287,016. (Source: OMD)

[6] The brand experienced ‘out of stocks’.

[7] When production of WaterWipes began in 2009, one shift was run on one machine just two days a month. Post campaign, there are now two machines running three shifts, 24 hours a day, five days a week, and by May, that will be seven days a week – 24/7 production!

[8] Birth rates per year: 2013 – 68,954; 2014 – 67,462; 2015 – 66,439. (Source: Central Statistics Office)

[9] We used actual increases in revenue from 2014 to 2015 to calculate our ROMI, but due to commercial sensitivities, these increases are represented as an overall %.

[10] A study of 6 countries evaluated the cost of one employed person to the state. The costs associated for each region were: Belgium (€33,443), France (€28 737), Germany (€25,550), Spain (€19,991), Sweden (€26,905) and United Kingdom (€18,008). (Source: European Fund for Strategic Investments)

The Impact

Having unlocked the ‘who’ of the WaterWipes brand and duly constructed an emotional dimension for it, the role of our communications was to create a connection between said brand and our target of new mums. We set about doing this strategically by explicitly highlighting both the rational and emotional differences of WaterWipes versus every other brand. 

As mentioned, there was no budget, and therefore no research, to ascertain exactly how our intended target thought or felt post campaign. 

We do, however, have plenty of evidence as to how our target behaved post campaign – and as the saying goes, actions do speak louder than words (and thoughts!). The increases in Volume Share achieved suggests mums went out and bought it and/or bought more of it. Our impressive Value Share indicates that not only did mums buy it in their droves, but they were also willing to pay up to three times more for it versus Private Label, the dominant force. It’s safe to assume that the only reason that cash conscious consumers would be willing to pay €300 or more per year (as per our very conservative arithmetic) for WaterWipes - the newest kid on the block in a heavily discounted, commodotised market - is if they perceived there was a real difference between it and everything else. And so, it would appear, we accomplished what we set out to achieve.

Another behavior we wanted to affect was to, where possible, halt mum’s historic migration out of the brand after the 6-month mark, at which point she tended to think that her baby’s skin was sufficiently tough enough to take on a less specialist and far less expensive wipe solution. And again, although we don’t have any scores on the doors from research, we do have large swathes of online reviews indicating that mums are staying with the brand way beyond the 4-6 month mark.

Our Twitter and Facebook results demonstrate that the brand is now, more than ever before, part of the conversation. This is a change in behaviour we hadn’t necessarily anticipated but, rather gratifyingly, it does demonstrate that our campaign really connected. 

New Learnings

Strategic Learning – that even when you have an outstanding product USP, you can’t rest on your laurels. As was the case in WaterWipes, our difference was made more meaningful and valuable by virtue of the fact that the product was different, but so too was the emotion behind the brand.

Creative Learning – that subverting conventions is great for piquing interest and getting standout. We took the tried and trusted product demo and flipped it; we proved our efficacy by showing just how ineffective a brand we were, which in turn proved very effective for WaterWipes sales.

WaterWipes Learning – the extent to which marketing really works, which, as trite as it may sound, was a genuine learning for the WaterWipes senior management team.

Summary

Long before Simon Sinek’s Golden Circles took the marketing world by storm, Edward McCloskey knew exactly ‘why’ he got up each morning and ‘why’ his brainchild, WaterWipes, was conceived – to offer mums a chemical-free baby wipe option. And this product ‘what’
 built modest growth for WaterWipes. 

But, it was only when we unlocked ‘who’ WaterWipes was, and used this meaningful emotional difference in communications, that growth for the brand rocketed. By highlighting for mums WaterWipes’ unique differences versus others, emotional and rational, in a unique way and demonstrating that these were worth paying more for, value share grew from 13.1% to 25.2% between January and October 2015 - remarkable for a newbie with up to three times the price premium in a commodotised FMCG category where migration to ‘cheapest’ was the norm. 

Media Gallery


Videos

The story of WaterWipes demonstrates the effectiveness of advertising in its purest form – i.e. take a great product, bring it to the masses in the right way and watch demand become so great that you have to build a brand new factory just to keep up with it! To fully appreciate the story of the brand, we need to first briefly tell the story of the man behind it – Louth native Edward McCloskey.

Edward’s father set up the Boyne Valley group, so Edward grew up in a culture that encouraged entrepreneurial spirit. From early on in his career, he constantly strived to develop new products and new solutions for problems that, in most cases, had gone unrecognised by others. The quest that led to WaterWipes was no different. It began in 2006 when Edward became a parent and his daughter suffered with severe nappy rash. This prompted the always-inquisitive Edward to investigate what was actually in the baby wipes his family was using. He was horrified to discover that even wipes claiming to be pure or for sensitive skin were choc full of chemicals. He wanted a chemical-free wipe and when he couldn’t find one, he set about inventing it.

Four intense years working with scientists, dermatologists and microbiologists led Edward to a major discovery - that by modifying the properties of water and making the H20 molecule clusters smaller, they could in fact penetrate the dirt on the skin more easily and therefore naturally clean it. This had never been done before in the baby wipes category and it led to the birth of WaterWipes; a revolutionary product that was a world’s first, so build it and they will come, right? Not exactly.

In 2015, having been in multiples for four years but only showing modest growth, the decision was taken to advertise WaterWipes for the first time. We were a tiny brand with a budget to match and we were going up against a fiercely competitive market dominated by familiar, trusted and big-spending brands – heavyweight household names like Pampers and J&J. And if that wasn’t difficult enough, WaterWipes came with a premium price tag that required consumers to pay up to three times as much as the competition in a heavily discounted category.

WaterWipes is the only wipe made to a pharmaceutical grade and, because the technology required to do this is relatively complicated, they are more expensive to produce and so more expensive to buy. At its full retail price of €2.99, it can be up to three times as expensive to buy as Private Label. To support this substantial price premium, it made sense to initially launch WaterWipes through the pharmacy market. By 2011, it was distributed in multiples and did modestly well with almost 6% market share five years after it was launched. In 2015, however, Edward and the brand team decided it was time for WaterWipes to take the plunge and try to make a splash in the Irish market by embarking on a first-time advertising campaign with the following objectives.

 

Commercial Objectives:

  • Increase sales and grow market share from 5.8% to 12% in Ireland and from 0.4% to 1% in the UK[1] - ambitious targets for a relative unknown in Ireland and a complete unknown in the UK; two fiercely competitive marketplaces.
  • Maintain the brand’s price premium - a critical KPI because WaterWipes are a small business, far smaller than their competitors, and the ability of the brand to succeed was dependent on protecting their price premium going forward.
  • Maintain engagement and purchase off-promotion and in doing so, reduce the dependency on, and number of, promotions that WaterWipes had to run during the year as, given the size of WaterWipes, the brand could no longer afford to promote as heavily or as frequently as its behemoth competitors.
  • Although not a primary KPI, it was hoped that if communications delivered as intended, the success in this market would help with growth and distribution of WaterWipes in the UK.

 

Marketing objectives:

  • Create a compelling brand for WaterWipes, which heretofore hadn’t got one.
  • And create an idea to launch it. One that would bring the brand’s USP and the brand’s personality to life in a convincing and different way. 
  • Appeal to mums-to-be and new mums with a view to disrupting existing preferences and ensuring that WaterWipes were more top of mind, whilst being very careful not to make mums feel bad about their previous choices.
  •  Protect the brand against a historical purchasing drop-off that occurred around the 4-6 month mark by driving engagement (either emotional or rational) with mum so that she became more bonded to the brand before she started to emerge from the ‘new baby haze’, and was more susceptible to switching based on price and a belief that her baby’s skin was less sensitive.

 

The Role for communications:

Given these clearly stated (albeit ambitious) objectives, the role for communications was two-fold:

  1. Create clear blue water between WaterWipes and everybody else by communicating the brand’s unambiguous differences and by repositioning the competition in the process.
  2. And convey to ‘mum’, in the right way and in the right tone of voice, that these differences – rational and emotional - were meaningful and worth paying a premium for.
 

[1] UK = United Kingdom.

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…” Theodore Roosevelt.

This was no easy task, but it was one we relished because we believed in the brilliance of the product and the promise of the brand. A promise that, if communicated right, had the potential to help WaterWipes take a hearty bite out of the baby wipe[1] market worth €11.54m in IRL[2] and £184m[3] in the UK. 

The size of the prize was enticing; however, this was a market dominated by four indomitable powers – Private Label, J&J, Huggies and Pampers – and WaterWipes was small fry by comparison.

Private Label led the market charge and, in March 2015, it had a whopping 52.7% volume share in multiples. J&J and Pampers, two hugely trusted household names in Ireland, had 25% and 4.1% respectively.

FIGURE 1

In 2014, J&J unsurprisingly had 98% SOV[4] of the Baby Wipes category and WaterWipes was responsible for the other 2%[5]

FIGURE 2

These figures show what WaterWipes was up against, but they don’t tell the full story. The Baby Wipes category, as distinct from the broader Baby Care category, is a small-spending one with just under €90k spent that year. Those figures also mask the brand presence and influence of Pampers which dominated the wider Baby Care category, where spends were more than 7 times that of wipes alone.

So, to better understand the degree to which WaterWipes was being outshouted, it is more accurate to look at SOV in that broader Baby Care market. Doing so demonstrates the almighty strength of J&J and Pampers – Pampers had 85% SOV, J&J had 14%, Huggies had the other 1% and WaterWipes… well, WaterWipes had a big fat 0%[6].

FIGURE 3

Pampers and J&J not only had multiple skews of baby wipes; they also had multiple skews in the broader Baby Care category which they supported ATL, each skew helping to build those brands – their familiarity, stature, the trust and credibility that was so important when it came to brands for baby. WaterWipes, conversely, had but one lone product, and an unknown brand to drive it.

FIGURE 4

WaterWipes’ premium pricing was a real challenge too, given the commoditisation of the baby wipes market and the drift towards Private Label as an increasingly acceptable, sometimes even desirable, solution. WaterWipes was up to three times more expensive than Private Label which meant that, in essence, we were asking people to pay up to €2 more a week with limited established difference. Even assuming a modest purchase rate of 2.9 packs a week, this equated to an ask of €300 more a year[7]!

And all other branded offerings, particularly J&J, Huggies and Pampers, heavily promoted throughout the year with the category norm being 6-8 promotions apiece, educating consumers to buy on price all the while. In fact, research revealed that half our target audience switched on price and only one-third claimed any kind of brand loyalty.

The influence of Private Label at one end of the spectrum, and deeply discounted branded heavyweights at the other, created a price pincer effect that meant stealing market share was going to be incredibly tough for the relatively costly and unknown WaterWipes.

Perhaps the budget for the campaign could help neutralise some of these obstacles? No. Like the brand, the budget was tiny, so we had to make sure we made one hell of an impact with our brand positioning and our comms. No pressure, then!

 

[1] We do not have the relavant, much larger, figure for the broader Baby Care category.

[2] IRL = Ireland.

[3] Both figures for IRL and UK exclude online, pharmacy, specialty and convenience stores. Hence, they represent a lower than actual number, but this is the best estimate we have based on Nielsen.

[4] SOV = Share of Voice

[5] Source:  Nielsen.

[6] Source:  Nielsen and Addynamics.

[7] Modestly assuming 2.9 packs (five changes a day using five wipes per change by seven days a week divided by an average of 60 wipes per pack) X 52 weeks  = 150.8 packs per year.  As WaterWipes retails at up to €2 more than Private Label, this means we are asking customers to pay up to €301.60 more a year vs competitor offerings.

Given the big tasks in hand and the little monies in pocket, not only did we have to find a way to communicate our differences in an unambiguous and significant manner, but in a way that would effectively reposition the competition too. We needed to convey that not all wipes are created equally; there are wipes and then there are WaterWipes, the benefits of which are worth paying more attention to and a bit more money for.

As a product, WaterWipes was in a league of its own; it was the only chemical-free wipe available. This clear and differentiated claim gave rise to WaterWipes’ clear and differentiated proposition – The World’s Purest Wipe. Compelling, simple, true. We couldn’t outspend the competition. We could out-best them. But to really make a dent, we had to out-brand them too. This was particularly important in a commodotised market.

We knew ‘why’ WaterWipes was created, ‘how’ it was created and ‘what’ the product offering was, but we needed to crack the ‘who’ of WaterWipes – the brand, what it stood for and why mum should care - if we were to really compete in a category that traded on trust, something J&J, Pampers and Huggies had an abundance of. 

We had a great product story to tell, but without a trusted brand to tell it, it would fall on deaf ears.

We did some quantitative and qualitative research[1] in Ireland and the UK prior to campaign development, and the insights garnered helped shape ‘who’ WaterWipes could be and what role it could credibly play in consumers’ lives.

It was clear from this research that being a new mum could be a really anxious time. Mums were bombarded with advice and information about how to be a ‘good mum’ and this onslaught - no matter how well-intentioned - exacerbated anxiety and left them feeling confused and guilty.

This presented a real opportunity for WaterWipes to step into the breach at this point and, in the midst of the guilt and confusion, offer mum some much needed simplicity, and in essence, guilt alleviation. The brand’s USP – as pure as cotton wool and water in the convenience of a wipe – being a guilt-free, no compromise wipe solution meant we had the legitimacy to do this. And once these benefits were made clear, mums were literally queuing up to pay a premium for the emotional relief and peace of mind that WaterWipes offered them.

Recognising a role for WaterWipes within this very emotional space gave us, in addition to a cracking product USP, an emotional raison d’etre from which we could start to build a truly different and valuable brand. A brand with a purpose, a value system and a personality – stripped back, honest and ethical - that mums could trust and turn to. These values, the bedrock of the new brand, were central to the creative brief and influenced the delivery of all our comms.

 

[1] 4 groups in IRL and 4 in the UK.

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way" John Maxwell

With the help of research, we had cultivated a WaterWipes brand. We also had a brand proposition – The World’s Purest. Now we needed a campaign idea that would bring our brand and proposition to life, and one that would resonate with parents and make them think twice about what they were using on their baby’s skin. Doing this too overtly would rail against our new brand personality, and just waxing lyrical about the product’s virtues would not be enough to make the impact or force the reassessment required.

And then it hit us... The big idea that drove the ‘World’s Purest Baby Wipes’ campaign emerged when our creative department started to really interrogate how other brands of wipes were currently being used. In addition to wiping baby’s bums, other wipes were being used in a multitude of ways – removing stains, cleaning cookers, removing make-up – but, surely products that contained enough chemicals to do these jobs effectively were not the best thing to use on newborn skin – skin five times more delicate than ours?

The creatives’ insight presented us with the perfect campaign platform – we could demonstrate what WaterWipes CANNOT do to showcase our superiority in purity – both rationally and emotionally. We believed that ‘showing’, rather than ‘telling’, this difference was an important aspect of building credibility and trust for the WaterWipes brand. And that doing a product ‘demo’ to demonstrate just how ineffective it was (as a household cleaner) felt like something very unconventional that would really create much needed standout and traction.

And so, our campaign set about dramatising the rational differences of the brand by firstly, showing what we DIDN’T do versus what all the other wipes could. WaterWipes couldn't remove stains or marks from walls. They could only work on babies’ skin. And secondly, by explaining that the reason for this was because WaterWipes was the only wipe that had just 2 natural ingredients.

We demonstrated our emotional difference in the autonomy we depicted throughout the campaign, most notably in TV - by clearly showing that our protagonist was a mum who had thought about the category and had made a confident decision, in both her hold and the way she carried the baby, and also in the way she demonstrates the product without any hyperbole, educating other mums on the product’s merits and thus providing them with the reassurance they needed that this was a choice they didn’t have to feel guilty about.

The tone of voice we adopted - which was a gentle sharing of valuable information that parents would be interested in, rather than being overly authoritative or patronising - was another key indication to consumers that WaterWipes was emotionally different to all the rest. With our tone, we intended outshouting the competition by not shouting at all! We wanted our comms to make mums feel like ‘better mums’, not to add to their anxiety or make them feel bad about the choices they had made up until that point.

Everything in the campaign, across all touchpoints, was kept natural and stripped back, just like the brand itself. 

 

Channel Planning:

Subsequent to the launch in March, we had free reign to phase the advertising to drive the best return for WaterWipes. To achieve this, we built the plan around two planning principles:

  1. Identifying audience insights that would increase advertising impact and relevance
  2. Identifying seasonal shifts in media value to optimise investment, driving greater advertising spend efficiency

First, the insights:

Annual Baby Boom

  • Irish people are creatures of habit, and baby-making (luckily for us) is no exception! In the four years previous to our launch, September had consistently been the busiest month for births in Ireland.

New Baby Bubble

  • ‘Very new mothers’ are incredibly difficult to reach with advertising messages. Their world naturally becomes consumed by the new baby in their lives, so they have far less time and headspace to digest any advertising messages in a truly meaningful way at that time.

Nesting

  • In the last trimester of pregnancy, the ‘nesting’ instinct starts to set in. This typically sets in just before the baby arrives, and is the phase where expectant mothers start to prepare the house and stockpile for the arrival of the new baby.

These three insights were used to identify the most impactful time of year to be live with the second burst of our campaign – June / July 2015.

Another thing to consider, on top of the most relevant months to be active, was which months provided the best value. This was particularly relevant for TV, where the cost fluctuates each month. 

The below chart illustrates month by month the number of eyeballs delivered vs the corresponding cost of buying TV at that time. This was used to identify months that provided value, but also balanced this with audience size. 

FIGURE 5

We knew that the June / July timeframe was critical from a planning perspective, but because June was expensive, we focused all of the TV spend for that period into July.

 

FIGURE 6

Two channels dominated new and expectant mothers’ media consumption - TV and digital.

TV was dedicated 70% share of the budget because mums with young babies consume a much higher proportion of their media within the home, and this medium is still the best channel for building fame and emotion (Binet & Field 2013).

Mums with young babies also spent a disproportionately high volume of time on digital platforms (20.9 hours per week v 18.8 for all adults[1]). Through this channel, we could add further depth and relevance to the WaterWipes story.

 

Media Plan Summary – Total spend €182,795

FIGURE 7

On TV, we identified that the optimum number of times for the target audience to see the ad was four. We then identified the TV stations which had the strongest reach and profile for both women 25-44 and housekeepers with children. Finally, we tweaked station combinations and weekly weights until we had the ideal mix – one that delivered the optimum cover for the lowest cost.

The other lead media channel was digital. The bursts were focused on driving mass awareness with women 25-44 / housekeepers using high-impact display and video creative, while the ‘always on’ activity was focused on identifying expectant mothers and tightly targeting them.

The bursts were across all devices and across all the top-visited websites for this audience. The most unique element of the campaign, though, was our use of programmatic. Programmatic digital is basically automated digital ad placement technology that allows advertisers to target very specific users with very specific messages. Using cookie tracking, we were able to identify in real time users exhibiting behaviours consistent with ‘being pregnant’. They may have been searching for information about pregnancy on Google, or visiting sites about maternity hospitals online. As a result of these behaviours, we identified them as a user who we wanted to talk to, and in less than 200 milliseconds, we had served them a WaterWipes ad.

FIGURE 8

 

[1] ROI TGI Population Survey, 2015

Results - both intended and unforeseen - exceeded all of our expectations. Of course we would say that, but really, they did - so much so that, to keep up with demand created, production went from one to four packs per second and a new 45,000 sq. ft. factory needed to be built! But back to that later.

Considering objectives as outlined:

 

Commercial:

Increase sales and grow market share – IRL and UK :

Sales: +64% IRL and +55% UK. 

Revenue: +71% IRL and +82% UK.

Volume Share:

+7% IRL (exceeding our own targets by 1.1%)

+0.8% UK (0.2% over projections)

And, as illustrates, the biggest increases in share for IRL corresponds directly with our TV ad being on air.

FIGURE 9

As MAT figures for ROI and UK demonstrate, this growth is a longer-term trend.

FIGURE 10

FIGURE 11

Maintaining a price premium:

Value Share

Stealing market share in an established market was an achievement, but punching above its weight disproportionately in Value Share was more meaningful, as it meant that WaterWipes maintained its price premium – which was critical for a business of its size.

FIGURE 12

Momentously, in October 2015 WaterWipes achieved a Value Share of 25.2%, grabbing share from Private Label amongst others, and overtaking for the first time its mammoth rival J&J, which had 24.9%[1].

FIGURE 13

Whilst in the UK, Value Shares rose from 1.3% to 2.9% between January and October 2015, in a declining value market[2].

FIGURE 14

IRL and UK YOY[3] average MAT Value Share figures show this is a longer-term trend. In IRL, YOY MAT grew from 11.3% in 2014 to 20% in 2015 - WaterWipes was the only brand that had any significant growth in Value Share during that period. In the UK, YOY MAT grew from 0.9% to 2.1%[4]

FIGURE 15

FIGURE 16

WaterWipes’ Volume and Value Share growth is remarkable in the FMCG category, where the prevailing trend is a drift to Private Label.

Maintain engagement and purchase off-promotion; reduce dependency on, and number of, promotions:

We wanted to copper-fasten the brand as justifying a price premium and had a clear strategy to reduce our level of cost promotions. The category norm is 6-8 promotions a year. Post new campaign, WaterWipes reduced the number of promotions it ran from an average of 6 to 4 in 2015.

To run an average promotion in Irish multiples costs approximately €20k. Reducing promotions by two saved €40k for WaterWipes – half the cost of making the TV ad! 

Although not a primary KPI, it was hoped the success in IRL would help Water Wipes’ growth and distribution in the UK:

Campaign success in Ireland was used by the WaterWipes team to secure invaluable, and competitively fought for, listings in Asda and double the amount of listings in Tesco and Boots. 

 

Marketing:

 Create a compelling brand for WaterWipes and an idea to launch it.

The ‘What’ of WaterWipes achieved 13.2% Value Share, but it was by effectively creating and communicating the ‘Who’ for the brand that this figure was propelled to 25.2%. 

There was no budget, and therefore no research, to qualify or quantify the campaign’s impact, but the demand and sales generated on foot of it speak to landing a perceived product difference and justifying a price premium.

Appeal to new mums and protect against a historical purchasing drop-off by driving engagement:

In the absence of research, our large swathes of online reviews indicate that mums, our key target, are staying with the brand way beyond the 4-6 month mark. Below is a taster.

FIGURE 17

 

Additional results:

Boost to other media:

The campaign generated an estimated rate card value of €268,920[5] in free PR.

Online searches increased in both IRL and UK while the campaigns were active.

FIGURE 18

FIGURE 19

YOY website sessions in IRL increased by 60.17% and users have increased by 82.47%, whilst numbers of Twitter followers and Facebook fans grew.

FIGURE 20

FIGURE 21

An unexpected, albeit welcome, surge in demand:

The campaign created a demand that exceeded expectations to the point that production could not meet it[6]. To remedy this, production was increased from one to four packs every second! This fourfold increase in production[7] meant that Irish Breeze had to build a huge new 45,000 sq. ft. factory just to keep up. 

More jobs:

This extra demand has resulted in the workforce increasing from 15 to 90 and growing.

Global expansion:

WaterWipes’ success here has paved the way for its launch in Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, The Netherlands, Portugal, South Korea, Iceland, Hong Kong, Cyprus, UAE and Bulgaria. It’s even sold in Outer Mongolia!

Change in Company Culture:

A telling, albeit relatively modest, effect of the campaign is that Edward McCloskey, a former marketing ‘skeptic’, has backed his new belief in marketing by trebling marketing spend from 2015 to 2016. 

And, senior management, for the first time in the company’s history, selected ‘marketing’ as the highest focus area for future growth of the business.

FIGURE 22

 

Discounting other factors:

New product launches? No. WaterWipes was, and still is, a one-product-strong brand... for the moment!

The product’s natural superiority has been the same since it came in to being in 2010.

Pricing was the same pre, during and post campaign.

We had full distribution prior to the campaign so, other than a two-fold increase in shelf space post campaign on the back of its success, distribution didn’t change.

Did WaterWipes promote? Yes, but 2-4 times less in 2015 than the category norm.

New packaging packaging coincided with the launch of the campaign; however, this was a subtle evolution of the old pack and was unlikely to have contributed in any significant way to the uplift in sales. Even if we very generously attribute a 5% increase in revenue to this pack change, we still achieve a hugely impressive ROMI.

FIGURE 23

According to the CSO, birth rates in IRL declined last year for the third year in a row[8]; however, even had they increased, this would have been an opportunity for all players in the market, not just WaterWipes.

Our marketing strategy was to consciously increase spend to build our brand, and with 13% SOV of the wider Baby Care category, we achieved an impressive, trend-bucking, 12% increase in Value Share.

Isolating the effects of the advertising:

If ever more proof was necessary that advertising was what made the difference for WaterWipes, we have it thanks to a UK test case area. Before being rolled out nationwide, our TV campaign for WaterWipes ran for four weeks in a regional test area in the UK, and sales in Boots there were measured. From this, we can undeniably isolate the effects of the campaign. In that test area, Boots sales increased from 2.6% to 3.8%, an uplift of 1.2% as a direct result of just TV.

FIGURE 24

ROMI

Given our size, we don’t have the luxury of econometrics or tracking, but we have outlined the ROMI for WaterWipes as transparently as possible below, calculated according to increase in revenue[9] + savings to revenue – costs ÷ costs.

FIRST ROMI – ROMI in Ireland of 210.90%

Based on 64% increase in volume sales = 71% increase in revenue.

SECOND ROMI – Conservative Irish ROMI

Even if we were to ascribe an incredibly generous 5% of revenue to the subtle changes in packaging, we get an impressive ROMI of 198.85%.

THIRD ROMI – UK ROMI

From the outset, the intention was that any ad produced in Ireland would also have to work for the UK, and would be run there for efficiencies. Other than a few tweaks in production in the UK, the bulk of the WaterWipes campaign was produced in Ireland, resulting in real economies of scale and an incredibly positive impact on UK ROMI, which was 828.41%.

ROMI – the monetary value of jobs created

According to a European Study[10], an unemployed person can cost a state between €18,008 and €33,443 a year. Applying this logic, using the most conservative figure (for the UK), it is plausible to estimate that the 75 jobs created by WaterWipes have, at least, saved the Irish State in the region of €1,350,600 per annum.

 

[1] Source: Nielsen.

[2] Source: Nielsen.

[3] YOY = Year-on-Year

[4] Source: Nielsen.

[5] Based on a PR coverage figure of 71,287,016. (Source: OMD)

[6] The brand experienced ‘out of stocks’.

[7] When production of WaterWipes began in 2009, one shift was run on one machine just two days a month. Post campaign, there are now two machines running three shifts, 24 hours a day, five days a week, and by May, that will be seven days a week – 24/7 production!

[8] Birth rates per year: 2013 – 68,954; 2014 – 67,462; 2015 – 66,439. (Source: Central Statistics Office)

[9] We used actual increases in revenue from 2014 to 2015 to calculate our ROMI, but due to commercial sensitivities, these increases are represented as an overall %.

[10] A study of 6 countries evaluated the cost of one employed person to the state. The costs associated for each region were: Belgium (€33,443), France (€28 737), Germany (€25,550), Spain (€19,991), Sweden (€26,905) and United Kingdom (€18,008). (Source: European Fund for Strategic Investments)

Having unlocked the ‘who’ of the WaterWipes brand and duly constructed an emotional dimension for it, the role of our communications was to create a connection between said brand and our target of new mums. We set about doing this strategically by explicitly highlighting both the rational and emotional differences of WaterWipes versus every other brand. 

As mentioned, there was no budget, and therefore no research, to ascertain exactly how our intended target thought or felt post campaign. 

We do, however, have plenty of evidence as to how our target behaved post campaign – and as the saying goes, actions do speak louder than words (and thoughts!). The increases in Volume Share achieved suggests mums went out and bought it and/or bought more of it. Our impressive Value Share indicates that not only did mums buy it in their droves, but they were also willing to pay up to three times more for it versus Private Label, the dominant force. It’s safe to assume that the only reason that cash conscious consumers would be willing to pay €300 or more per year (as per our very conservative arithmetic) for WaterWipes - the newest kid on the block in a heavily discounted, commodotised market - is if they perceived there was a real difference between it and everything else. And so, it would appear, we accomplished what we set out to achieve.

Another behavior we wanted to affect was to, where possible, halt mum’s historic migration out of the brand after the 6-month mark, at which point she tended to think that her baby’s skin was sufficiently tough enough to take on a less specialist and far less expensive wipe solution. And again, although we don’t have any scores on the doors from research, we do have large swathes of online reviews indicating that mums are staying with the brand way beyond the 4-6 month mark.

Our Twitter and Facebook results demonstrate that the brand is now, more than ever before, part of the conversation. This is a change in behaviour we hadn’t necessarily anticipated but, rather gratifyingly, it does demonstrate that our campaign really connected. 

Strategic Learning – that even when you have an outstanding product USP, you can’t rest on your laurels. As was the case in WaterWipes, our difference was made more meaningful and valuable by virtue of the fact that the product was different, but so too was the emotion behind the brand.

Creative Learning – that subverting conventions is great for piquing interest and getting standout. We took the tried and trusted product demo and flipped it; we proved our efficacy by showing just how ineffective a brand we were, which in turn proved very effective for WaterWipes sales.

WaterWipes Learning – the extent to which marketing really works, which, as trite as it may sound, was a genuine learning for the WaterWipes senior management team.

Long before Simon Sinek’s Golden Circles took the marketing world by storm, Edward McCloskey knew exactly ‘why’ he got up each morning and ‘why’ his brainchild, WaterWipes, was conceived – to offer mums a chemical-free baby wipe option. And this product ‘what’
 built modest growth for WaterWipes. 

But, it was only when we unlocked ‘who’ WaterWipes was, and used this meaningful emotional difference in communications, that growth for the brand rocketed. By highlighting for mums WaterWipes’ unique differences versus others, emotional and rational, in a unique way and demonstrating that these were worth paying more for, value share grew from 13.1% to 25.2% between January and October 2015 - remarkable for a newbie with up to three times the price premium in a commodotised FMCG category where migration to ‘cheapest’ was the norm. 

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