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I have daddy issues.

(My issue is that I don’t have a (Scrub Daddy).

Although I have a spongey, Daddy-shaped hole in my life right now. As a digital marketer, I can’t help but admire their TikTok strategy (the sole reason I know Scrub Daddy in the first place). 

They’re funny, extremely engaging, and in terms of brand awareness and recognition, they’d be hard-pressed to do something that would have performed better than their exceptionally effective TikTok marketing strategy.

Before we take a deep dive into Scrub Daddy’s TikTok strategy, let’s take a little look at their brand. A shallow dive, if you will. 

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What is Scrub Daddy?

What the hell is a Scrub Daddy? 

For the uninitiated, a Scrub Daddy is a sponge. But not just any sponge, it’s a sponge with cleaning capabilities claimed to be far superior to your other run-of-the-mill sponges. This sponge is a sponge with attitude. 

You heard that right. A technologically advanced state-of-the-art scum-busting sponge. But what features does it boast?

• Heat-reactive texture transformation
• Smell repel (say goodbye to smelly sponges)
• It won’t scratch your fancy new cooking pots and utensils.
• It will survive a ride in the dishwasher

This is the strong but gentle, soft but tough on grime sponge you have been longing for. 

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A brief history of Scrub Daddy

Way back in 2007, Scrub Daddy was originally marketed to car garages as a means for mechanics to their hands clean, however, it was met with fierce opposition. It was considered ‘nonessential and overly priced’ - the idea had seemingly run out of fuel and Aaron parked the proposal. The stock was left in storage, never again to see the light of day. 

Until…

Fast forward to 2011, Aaron, Scrub Daddy’s founder, was cleaning everyday items in his home with a regular sponge and realised that everything was getting scratched. But why? There must be a solution.

Scrub Daddy to the rescue. 

He tried his hand-cleansing sponge on items around his house and lo and behold… no scratches. 

He added the signature smile to Scrub Daddy, not only anthropomorphising it but making it excellent at cleaning utensils. Boom. Patent that Aaron. 

Scrub Daddy is born. 

So begins the next stage of the journey. 

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How did Scrub Daddy become so successful?

Well, long story short - with a little help from a high-profile outside investor (to begin with).

In 2012 Scrub Daddy made his debut on the small screen. Aaron plucked up the courage to take his invention onto Shark Tank (USA’s equivalent of Dragon’s Den for any of our UK readers). 

Aaron went in aiming for $100,000 for 10% of his business to set up an independent manufacturing facility for Scrub Daddy. However, (spoiler alert) he secured a whopping $200,000 in trade for 20% equity in Scrub Daddy after an intense bidding war. 

This turned out to be an incredibly fruitful investment for the shark as Scrub Daddy reportedly just crossed the $670 million mark in sales, making it one of the most successful products to be featured on Shark Tank. 

From that point, the only way us up (baby).

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How is Scrub Daddy marketed?

Let’s have a look at how Scrub Daddy has been marketed. 

Back in the day (remember we’re talking around 15 years ago here) Aaron got his product in front of as many people as possible in what at the time would have been a relatively effective method of marketing - television shopping channels. 

Who watches television shopping channels? 

According to QVC, their audience comprises of:

• Women aged between 35 - 64
• Educated
• Higher-than-median income
• Shops online regularly

On the face of it, this looks like a pretty lucrative market to advertise to. They’re on a higher than average income so have more money to spend and already love to shop from home. But once you’ve cornered this market, where do you go from here?

What’s clear is Scrub Daddy sees the value of marketing to a younger audience. Chances are, a Gen Z audience will have or soon will be moving into a place of their own, heading off to university, or moving in with friends - essentially they’re starting the next chapter of their life.

So now you’ve got this huge portion of the market with no real affiliation to any cleaning products just yet. How do you communicate the value of your product and captivate this younger audience so that you are the first brand that comes to mind when shopping for cleaning essentials?

Well, the answer is simple. TikTok.

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Scrub Daddy TikTok marketing strategy

It’s cost-effective, simple to use, and has a huge audience to get your product in front of. As of the time of writing this article, Scrub Daddy has 3.4m TikTok followers and a grand total of 71.1m likes on their videos. #scrubdaddy has over 3.3bn views. It’s safe to say that there is a lot of love for this cheeky little sponge on TikTok.

But how have Scrub Daddy used TikTok to their advantage to build this huge presence on the platform?

Let’s take a look at how ‘America’s most popular sponge’ is now one of the world's most famous sponges. 

Native content

First off, Scrub Daddy’s content is incredibly native to the platform. But what do we mean by ‘native’? Well, it feels like it should be on there. They’ve employed a social media team that clearly uses TikTok and understands it’s nuances down to a tee. 

They produce content that their target audience can relate to and engage with. Which in this case is absurd, niche, and in some cases downright bizarre content. But you know what? It works, people watch it. So they’ve leaned into it. 

Let’s face it, all of the videos are essentially adverts for Scrub Daddy. They’re driving awareness for the brand with the virality of the videos but they’re also highlighting the USPs of the product and selling the benefits to their audience whether they realise it or not. They take the ‘Us vs Them’ angle to the extreme and use it as a basis for most of their videos. 

Trends

Trending content on TikTok drives engagement. It’s a simple, fun, but effective way of garnering engagement. When you drive engagement on your videos - this indicates to TikTok that people are resonating with your content which means that the algorithm thinks ‘wow, this is great content. More people need to see this' and push it to more people, thus fuelling its virality. 

Scrub Daddy see trends and formulates a plot on how they can make something that's entertaining, resonates with their audience, but is also specific to their product. They tend to use either trending sounds or creative concepts.  

For instance, a huge trend of 2023 on TikTok has been using green screen overlays from snippets of TV shows or films and then applying them to a specific situation within your niche by providing context with a text overlay.  

Tone of voice

The way that you speak to your audience can make or break a connection. When your communication feels authentic to the audience you are addressing, the better your message will be received. 

If you’re trying to speak to a younger audience through TikTok, talk like you see others talking on the platform. Scrub Daddy does this incredibly well. Using slang, some choice language, and emojis to say the least. But most importantly, the message feels like it is coming from a peer - like one of your friends using the platform, rather than some out-of-touch faceless corporate entity.  

Personification

Talking of faceless corporate entities… that is something that Scrub Daddy most definitely is not. This brand has always had two smiling faces. Not only do we have our yellow spongey friend but we also have Aaron who frequently features on the account. 

Putting a face to a brand helps to build trust and enables customers to relate to and engage with your brand. 

They don’t only use Aaron, they use the actual Scrub Daddy to personify their brand and use it as a character for their content by putting it in situations that you’d often find people in. Again, this makes the content specific and relatable to their target audience and helps to form a deeper connection with Scrub Daddy. 

Another brand that does that incredibly well is Ryanair. You can read more about how they personify their brand to connect with their audience here. 

Us Vs Them

You can regularly find Scrub Daddy hurling abuse at regular sponges about how they smell, how they look, how dirty they get, how they scratch things… the list goes on. 

You’ll also find Scrub Daddy setting fire to your regular run-of-the-mill sponges in a sinister act of malice. These seemingly devious acts are actually performing a key task for Scrub Daddy. It shows how they’re different from others, highlights their USPs and sells you the benefits of their product in an informative, entertaining, and memorable way. 

You don’t catch a lot of other brands simply setting fire to their competitors - which is what makes Scrub Daddy cut through the noise and stand out in a sea of brands doing things in the same, boring way. 

Simplicity

Above all else, their content is simple. It’s low production value, a lot of the time relatively low effort, the message is also simple - Scrub Daddy is better than the sponge you already have. 

Simplicity is the secret to effective marketing. When you display something in an easy-to-understand, simple, digestible way, the message you are trying to convey to your audience becomes easier to understand and thus becomes more memorable and meaningful.

Scrub Daddy get TikTok. They understand the audience that they’re marketing to, they don’t overcomplicate, they’re funny, always on trend, and make content that makes TikTok the platform that it is. 

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Scrub Daddy is a case study on how brands should approach TikTok to drive unrivalled awareness for their products.

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Words by Andrew Boardman - Marketing Content Manager

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