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Why would a celebrity with millions of followers want to bare all (quite literally) to work with a formula company? The answer is radically simple: There is nothing more universally humbling than feeding a baby.
For those who aren’t familiar, the contentious space of baby formula is a category riddled with parent-shaming opinions on what should or should not be said, posted, allowed, supported or marketed. Essentially, it’s a category with “shoulds and shouldn’ts” mandated by outdated guidelines.
As the first new infant formula company to launch in the U.S. in seven years, we knew we needed a new approach to turn an industry on its head and disrupt the aisle.
Starting the right conversation
We needed a new way of building the brand in favor of a more ethical, honest approach than the legacy conglomerates who dominated the category. How would we do it?
First and foremost, we knew we needed to start a new conversation around formula. And that meant a celebrity could never be a simple swipe up or a single social post. We needed a bigger, better, bolder and more—well, Bobbie—approach.
Enter the Bobbie MotherBoard. We bypassed the influencer agency, the codes and the superficial C-suite titles, and went full throttle on establishing a diverse collective of modern parents, leaning into emotive storytelling, fierce activism and bringing these well-known faces shoulder-to-shoulder with our community of parents in their reality: the winding road of feeding and raising babies in America.
It all started just six months after we hit the market with our first national brand campaign, “How Is Feeding Going,” launched during National Breastfeeding Month, a triggering time for parents who can’t breastfeed. The campaign video asked viewers to pledge to create a different kind of conversation around feeding by asking, “How is feeding going?” rather than assuming any new parent would breastfeed.
We won two Webby Awards for our work. The campaign had nothing to do with selling infant formula and everything to do with evolving the cultural conversation around how we choose to feed our babies.