When an Idea Is Born

For us, the path to good work hasn’t been too dissimilar to parenthood. It is not what it seems from the outside, you learn a lot along the way, there’s plenty of team work involved and heaps of love. So to see WaterWipes’ #thisisparenthood project received by parents as well as it has been, is a testament to our co-parenting skills. 

From the outset we wanted the world’s purest baby wipes to translate into a more emotional message about honesty. But it still amazes us just how much the project transcended this and moved to a place of genuine openness and dare we say, real magic.

You could argue there was magic the whole way through - the serendipitous combination of right place, right time, right client, right agency, right director. 

You could argue it helped that the three project leads, from client to agency to talent, were mothers with their own direct experiences held close to their heart. 

You could argue it was the subject: there’s a real need to talk about the difficulties of parenthood and the world was ready to do it.

But none of these responses get to the practicalities that helped elevate a piece of branded content to something worth watching.

We identified three key themes and in the spirit of honesty, we wanted to share how it worked for us.

On Trust

Align on the overall purpose of the work then trust everyone involved to do what they do best

Here’s the thing with trust, it’s often blind, and in the process of creation, it often crumbles and strains. However in our case, we had an army of devotees across multiple agencies, clients and production teams globally, all buying into the premise that ‘with honesty we inspire trust’. It was as empowering for us as much as the talent (or should we say parents) who trusted us to faithfully, honestly and respectfully document their very real lives and present them in the right manner, without artifice, without turning their lives into a commodity. 

On Flexibility

Allow the idea to grow and change

While trust is established, flexibility must be maintained. It’s not a fixed position as much as a constant vigil. We knew that our idea would throw up unplanned moments and strange surprises, and so if we were rigid in our thinking we were doomed to fail. We had to sit back and watch it unfold, shaping the final content around insights gathered by our research and the footage we captured. Having faith in the director (Lucy Cohen) to deliver something, and that’s scary territory in our line of work. 

On Brand Presence

Branding doesn’t have to be binary

Traditionally, branding works on a frequency which feels clumsy and disruptive (not in the good way). What we discovered is that it was how we put it in there. By placing the brand up front, openly and honestly, we could be an enabler of an amazing piece of content not a hinderer. In fact for us, we found that not selling something was as powerful as selling it. Allowing us to create something with cultural value that genuinely moved and created conversation.

While this was our experience, it’s important to remember that all babies – we mean, campaigns – are different and there’s no one size fits all. You have to learn on the job, much like parenthood. 

Cali Oliver is creative director at The Brooklyn Brothers

Hannah Drury is creative lead at The Brooklyn Brothers

Cathy Kidd VP is global marketing at WaterWipes