Cleaning up TikTok with a smile

Scrub Daddy’s CEO, Aaron Krause, in an image from an interview with CEO Magazine.

If you’re looking for a Masterclass in social media content, scroll through what Scrub Daddy is doing.

They have established a strong visual brand that works well on social media, they’re adding value to their audience by focusing on lifestyle (instead of the product), they are being authentic. If you are able to master these three pillars, you are well on your way to a winning content plan.

The brand began in a way that was closely connected with marketing. The company founder found their first taste of success on the QVC shopping channel and then went on Shark Tank in 2012 (and has been named Shark Tank’s most successful product to date). And what is Scrub Daddy? A smiling sponge made of a special non-scratch polymer that becomes tougher with cold water and softer with warm water.

But what makes me love their marketing is how well the translated to their social media presence, specifically TikTok, where they have 3.8 million followers. Let’s take a deeper look at what they did that works.

1 - Have a strong visual brand, relevant to the platform

If you’ve been on TikTok, you know that prominent logo, brand fonts and stiff scripts will work against a brand. What works best is content that is fun and surprising.

Scrub Daddy is able to lean into their recognizable product - it doesn’t look like any other cleaning product. Their brand colours, especially the bold yellow and pink of their hero products, stand out. They also created a mascot who looks like a giant, smiling Scrub Daddy sponge that makes it’s rounds on their earned channels, and has even hung out with Duo (Duo Lingo’s TikTok famous owl).

The Scrub Daddy mascot with Duo Lingo’s Duo the Owl

For many brand and social media managers, this will take some creative thinking. How can you authentically represent your brand through image and video content? You should have a page in your visual brand guidelines that highlights how your brand can come to life through social media.

Come up with a list of the 3-5 most important emotions that your brand, company or product embody and come up with lists of things that could represent this visually. It’s best if you’re able to bring some other people into this brainstorm to keep ideas coming. Out of these ideas pick 3-5 visual elements that you think can be repeated across content and would be a natural fit for a social media channel, to help build association with you. These will be your core visual brand. You can keep the other ideas for future content series, campaigns or one-off content pieces.

If you are a happy, fun brand like Scrub Daddy you can lean into fun colours as well. But if you are a more serious brand, for example a financial planning company, you may want to highlight trustworthy faces or a spokesperson wearing a shirt, tie or scarf in your brand colours, or physical elements that highlight trust (portfolios, secure safes, or realistically aspirational images of lifestyles achieved successful financial plans).

You’ll want to repeat these pillars across your content on a regular basis.

2 - Add value to your audience, by speaking to their lifestyle and aspirations (more than your products)

Just about everybody wants a clean home, and wishes they had more fun or an easier time cleaning it. Scrub Daddy focused on reaching a younger audience who clean regularly and either enjoy cleaning or WANT to enjoy cleaning. Millenials and Gen Z are increasingly using TikTok as a search engine, to solve common problems, and aspirationally find and build connections with content creators they respect.

Tapping into this insight and understanding the problem their audience has, Scrub Daddy set about building a presence on TikTok, specifically within a community known as #CleanTok - which brings creators and content together to highlight ways to better clean your home, review products, and show amazing cleaning hacks and before/after footage.

Scrub Daddy is answering questions and showing how they solve a key problem their audience has, and a lot of the content they are creating or sponsoring is informative, inspirational and fun.

You can already see the alignment, and how targeted it is. If they went wider, they wouldn’t have been able to build the brand resonance. When approaching any platform, understand your target audience, know what value you are providing, and relevently build a strong presence. Look for hashtags with strong engagement. The engagement matters more than the reach. It helps to support the authenticity of your brand and will make your efforts online more efficient.

3 - Be Authentic

The Scrub Daddy brand is fun and playful, and that comes across in all of their content - owned, earned, and sponsored. They also show they care about helping people have cleaner homes through prominent sponsorships of cleaner/creators like Auri Katariina a content creator who helps people with extreme deep cleans - often people who are dealing with personal crises or mental health issues. Her content regularly racks up millions of views. She started clearing with Scrub Daddy sponges because she loved how effective they were; Scrub Daddy noticed the content, and engaged her in a sponsorship.

Auri Katariina even features Scrub Daddy products in her thumb nails.

The lesson here - look for creators that love your brand, and sponsor to increase visibility and to provide them with more opportunity to authentically use your product. As you build a relationship with a creator, you will also be building one with their brand. Keep brand safety in mind here. That will be different for each brand, but make sure you do a scan of their channels and past content to avoid creators who are negative to other people or engage in anything hateful. Sponsorships can range from providing them with free product (check local laws to make sure they are transparent about how they got the product), sponsoring occasional content to highlight a specific campaign goal you have, through to a long-term sponsorship similar to this example with Auri Katariina.

It’s important to note that none of their posts are overly curated, there is no marketing jargon, and often you’ll just see the recognizable smiling sponge in the content, cleaning away as it should be. In fact, having a product that helps content creators make more engaging content (what is more engaging than a smile?) naturally lends Scrub Daddy to be used in #CleanTok videos.