WaterWipes awareness in the U.S. has been growing but was mostly tied to diaper changes. With the desire to grow share, the brand challenged PR to create a moment that tied their wipes with other messy moments in 2023.

Targeting fall, a season monopolized by fun family moments, WaterWipes knew it would need to cut through and capture parents’ attention amidst parties and trick-or-treating. As a result, a PR-led campaign was born (with minimal paid social support and no OLV/TV) to raise mass awareness of the world’s purest baby wipe.

In the U.S., parents face absurd expectations surrounding Halloween each year. With pumpkin carvings, DIY costumes and sticky candy, WaterWipes saw an opportunity to center its wipes as the ‘treat’ for Halloween’s spookiest messes. The holiday is met with competitive costume contests (even the cultural zeitgeist is flooded with celebrity parents going all-out at Heidi Klum’s Halloween party!), dreams of being the house with the best candy and spookiest decorations and the desire to give their kids the best possible experience. This level of expectation and complexity often falls short or, worse, ends in tears.

With anticipation running high, parents feel the pressure to make the real thing live up to anticipation. And yet, they forget that sometimes the simple solutions are the most effective. That’s where WaterWipes – the world’s purest wipe with minimal ingredients (only water and a drop of fruit extract) for maximum effectiveness – enters the scene.

WaterWipes, the world’s purest baby wipe, is known for its minimal ingredients that clean and soothe delicate skin. In a world full of choices and advice for parents, WaterWipes shows that less is more when it comes to caring for your loved ones. Historically, WaterWipes has targeted parents of babies and toddlers, caring for their child’s skin during diaper changes.

However, as infants grew out of diapers – and WaterWipes continued to grow share globally – it became clear that there was an opportunity to address life’s other messy moments. With a new above-the-line campaign being planned for early 2024 targeting parents of school-age kids, WaterWipes tasked the agency with developing a campaign that would lay the groundwork for this new campaign and drive mass awareness of WaterWipes as a must-have product in non-diapering usage occasions. ​

The objective was to go beyond changing diapers – we needed to change perceptions.

While Halloween is a thrill for kids, it’s not the same for parents; the excitement is met with pressure to deliver perfection. The best candy, costume and experience are all top-of-mind for parents – but cleaning the messes during trick-or-treating (and its aftermath), isn't.​

As the trick to Halloween’s messy treats, WaterWipes debuted its Hallowclean Machine in mid-October at the Brooklyn Harvest Festival – an event for costumes, candy and crafts. Featuring special mess-detecting technology, the interactive machine scanned kids, gave them a rating from “Spook-tacularily Sticky” to “un-BOO-lievably Gooey,” and dispensed free WaterWipes to clean up.

And because where you find the best candy, you’re bound to find the biggest messes, WaterWipes partnered with Nextdoor’s Treat Map to map itself in the middle of the mess. Trick-or-treaters could locate Hallowclean stations via the Treat Map in NYC, LA, Chicago, Denver and Dallas, ready to clean sugar-coated fingers and faces.

Between gooey treats and chocolate-mustached faces, Halloween brings many opportunities for messes —but parents are rarely prepared. In fact, parents barely think about these messes at all.​ According to a survey, only 16% plan for trick-or-treating messes or accidents; yet 85% say their kids dig into candy before getting home.

To reach parents with kids older than two, we showed up exactly where the messes occur. The campaign launched among thousands of parents at the Brooklyn Harvest Festival, then each Hallowclean station was planted along popular trick-or-treating paths in five cities nationwide.

WaterWipes also captured images and video of famous mom, singer and actress Kelly Rowland and local mom influencers sharing how they use WaterWipes for fall messes. Digital assets were created by Nextdoor and shared via newsfeed and email to encourage Neighbors to buy wipes and map out Hallowclean stations in the lead up to Halloween.

In just four weeks we…

…launched the Hallowclean Machine on Oct. 21 at the Brooklyn Harvest festival with Kelly Rowland and her son Noah. At that time, Kelly interviewed with 12 key lifestyle, parenting and entertainment media onsite and virtually.

…mapped Hallowclean stations via Nextdoor Treat Map and announced the news via press release on Oct. 24, inviting parents nationwide to find a Hallowclean station in their town.

…tapped parenting influencers to create ‘Get Un-Ready with Me’ videos using WaterWipes to gently clean face paint, sticky fingers and other Halloween messes. They also stopped by Hallowclean stations on Halloween night, encouraging followers to join in.

…ran an organic and paid social campaign from Oct. 19-31 on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat that reached a wider parenting community.

…worked with retailer partners Target and Amazon to promote the campaign via media ads to reach parents during their shopper journey in October.

The results prove WaterWipes successfully showed households everywhere that its wipes are the perfect trick for Halloween’s treats and reframed the brand’s potential in their lives beyond diapering:

• 1.7 billion earned media impressions across 453 placements in top lifestyle, parenting, beauty and entertainment outlets – all neutral or positive in tone.

• This included features in outlets the WaterWipes audience reads the most. For

example, the WaterWipes audience is 18X more likely to read Byrdie; 3X more

likely to read E! News; 4X more likely to read People Magazine; and 7X more

likely to read theSkimm.

• Other coverage includes a feature segment on Access Hollywood,

HelloBeautiful, Bossip, Extra and more.

• 74% of coverage included a specific usage occasion (e.g. “safe to use on hands and face while traveling”) or product message (e.g. “gentle on skin,” “just a drop of fruit extract”).

• 1.6 million influencer impressions with an engagement of 2.3% and 3046% view-through rate. Posts were met with glowing comments, including:

• “WaterWipes is where it’s at.” — @raisingself

• “We love WaterWipes I keep them in the house, car and even at the office!” —

@kellysquares

• Amplification on Target.com and Amazon resulted in $170,000 in sales.

• The owned social content drove 20K organic impressions, and 16M paid social impressions. Also, partnering with Kelly Rowland and Nextdoor led to an additional 34.7M paid and social impressions, helping WaterWipes reach new parents.

• 33.7 million impressions achieved on earned social.