The disposable diaper market may be
tough these days, but Kimberly-Clark’s Huggies — the perennial No. 2 — is rolling out a new campaign through the very tenderest part of the category: “Natural Born Fighters” focuses on the stories of impossibly tiny newborn infants in intensive care.
The campaign kicks off with powerful
true stories, chief among them Stacy Gooden-Crandle and her son Derick Hall, the Seattle Seahawks linebacker who was born at 23 weeks, weighing just 2 pounds, 9 ounces and given a 1% chance of
survival. He is now 6’3″ and 260 pounds and a reigning Super Bowl champion. Also featured: Olympic gold medalist swimmer Allison Schmitt and a roster of history’s famous preemies — Albert Einstein,
Sir Isaac Newton and Anna Pavlova among them — whose fragile beginnings preceded extraordinary lives.
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The campaign’s true energy, though, will likely play out in parents’ social feeds.
The campaign invites consumers to share the Little Fighters post, tagging @niculittlefighters, with Huggies donating $1 per eligible share – up to $250,000 – to the Derick Hall One Percent
Foundation, the nonprofit Hall and his mother founded to support NICU families and youth. Positive community responses may also be repurposed as standalone content on the @niculittlefighters handle.
The campaign, which runs through Dec. 31, kicks off to coincide with the start of National Nurses Week, with Mother’s Day following four days later.
The effort also puts a spotlight on
Huggies’ micro (born before 26–28 weeks of gestation) and nano (born before 28 weeks gestation) preemie diapers – products most consumers may not know exist. (Roughly 10% of U.S.
births occur before the 37th week of pregnancy.) Designed in partnership with NICU nurses and therapists for babies under 2 and 4 pounds, respectively, they feature overlapping fasteners to
accommodate patient lines and tubes, a narrow profile to support developmental positioning, and materials that avoid harsh irritants on fragile skin.
Every diaper is hand-inspected at the
company’s Neenah, Wisconsin, facility, and each box is packed with an encouraging note. Since 2013, more than 38 million have gone through that process.
Scott Glenn, vice president of Huggies
Diapers, tells Marketing Daily via email the campaign brings both information and emotional storytelling “together in a way that is authentic, compelling, and deeply human,” describing it as
a chance to demonstrate “the precision and dedication we put into creating our preemie diapers.”
The campaign arrives as the U.S. disposable diaper market continues to shrink alongside the
birth rate. In the last 12-month period tracked by Circana, the category declined 1.7% to $5.8 billion, with Huggies maintaining its position as the second-largest brand behind Procter & Gamble’s
Pampers. But Kimberly-Clark has shown it can outrun category headwinds with the right product story. Last year’s relaunch of Huggies Snug & Dry — built around the unusual brief of adding features
without raising prices, at a moment when premiumization had defined the category for years — helped drive a 13.1% jump in the company’s profit last quarter, reports the Wall Street
Journal.
