Marketing in the News: Scrub Daddy

I was interested in the article "How a Viral Cleaning Brand is Using TikTok to Reach Gen Z with Videos Making Fun of Advertising" by Gillian Follett because I am a frequent user on the app, TikTok, so I have viewed some of Scrub Daddy’s advertisements and found them quite funny. The three main points of this article is that the brand, Scrub Daddy, has gained over millions of followers on TikTok due to their advertising videos. Next, Scrub Daddy’s account has become so popular due to the brand creating advertisements that do not feel like advertisements, but rather fun videos. Finally, their social media account has helped their brand grow in sales by making customers feel more inclined to purchase their product because they remember the advertisements on TikTok.

The value proposition of Scrub Daddy is that it is one of the most known sponges to change texture based on the temperature of water. If you use cold water, the product can be used as a scrub to get off a tough or stuck mess. If you use warm water, the product can be used as a regular sponge. The brand promises that their product will make daily cleaning easier. The brand’s competitive advantage is that it is one of the first sponges, and currently very few, to function the way that it does.

The marketing relevance explored in the article is their new marketing strategy. Their strategy is to post funny advertisements that bring brand awareness on TikTok. The reason that this strategy is so successful is because their advertisements do not seem like regular advertisements, but rather entertaining videos that embrace Gen Z’s weird sense of humor by following the current trends on the app, while including their brand.

The challenge that the company is trying to overcome is that the product has a heavy middle aged female demographic and wants to expand. Their connection with QVC was making their job to expand demographics more difficult, since mainly females watch this television network. To approach this challenge, they hired a marketing team to advertise to a younger demographic. Their competitors do not have a TikTok account to make memorable advertisements that attract a young audience, which is hurting them because Scrub Daddy is now one of the most successful Shark Tank companies of all time. 

The marketing approach is unique because we have seen other companies, like Wendys, use twitter to advertise and appeal to Gen Z in the past. Although no company has posted TikTok advertisements that integrate Gen Z’s humor as well as Scrub Daddy’s because they don’t just follow the popular and fun trends, but sometimes the weird and dark humored trends. For example, Scrub Daddy partnered with the online language lessons brand, Duolingo, and created a video. The content was that they used an audio where Spongebob Squarepants says, “Who do they think they are? I’ve given the best years of my life to this place and they think they can just fire me like that? Like trash? I don’t think so,” and the Duolingo mascot is angrily staring at the Scrub Daddy mascot because he’s at the Duolingo headquarters. It did appeal to their buyer persona of a younger generation because their TikTok account currently has 1.7 million followers with 41.5 million likes. 

Their marketing approach was good because they took a risk to market their product on a newer app that not many businesses advertised well on. They were able to stand out because they were one of the first companies to create advertisements based off of the current trends on the app. If I were on the marketing team, I would create an Instagram and Facebook account to post more advertisements to continue appealing to middle aged women because they still want to reach as many consumers as possible. I learned from this assignment that risk is key to marketing because being different and not following what other companies are doing means that your company will stand out. 

Article Link : https://adage.com/article/digital-marketing-ad-tech-news/scrub-daddy-uses-tiktok-reach-gen-z/2420141 

Scrub Daddy Website: https://scrubdaddy.com/ 

Scrub Daddy TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@scrubdaddy