Dream On Me:
Brand Strategy & Growth
Dream On Me is a 30+ year nursery furniture & accessories brand, delivering high quality & affordable products to new parents. The brand is one of the top 10 in the segment in the North American market, well-known among celebrities & consumers alike, with several bestsellers.
The brand is the first & primary launch of the legacy company – D.O.M. Family – that boasts of 35 years+ of manufacturing and crafting nursery furniture & products.
Brand Goal
The Brand was the primary revenue generator for the parent company, having created a position in the market & in the minds of the consumers for over 3 decades.
Time had come to grow with the times and establish a strong identity & presence to do justice to the business’ market positioning & legacy, as well as create opportunities to target new consumers & channels.
This is where I stepped in.
Brand Challenges
Outdated & Masculine Creative Approach
No Thought-leadership to showcase 30+ Years of Innovation
Lack of Platform Direction
Inconsistent Branding
Underutilized Database
Lack of Inclusivity in Communication
No Clear Digital Marketing Strategy
Step 1: Upgrade Brand Direction & Identity
COMPETITION & INDUSTRY RESEARCH
Research showcased that the mass audience that the brand was catering to required sensitivity and a straight-forward, honest tonality.
They were also bombarded with loud brands in the affordable segment, creating an opportunity to [further] establish Dream On Me as a thought-leader & a parent’s must-have.
BRAND TONE OF VOICE
The Brand’s refreshed tonality direction was be simple yet position itself as the friendly Mom next door.
BRAND VISUAL IDENTITY APPROACH
To tie in the research & TOV, the refreshed Visual Identity is colorful & seasonal, aligning with the well-established logo. However, it takes on softer, muted & modern tones to align with the evolved audience preferences & industry. The aim was to make it unique but have a mass appeal.
BRAND KEYWORDS IDENTIFIED
Friendly, Modern, Colorful, Straight-forward, Humorous, Educational
Result: A vibrant Brand Identity that allowed the brand to become instantly relatable to the outgoing, busy & friendly mass parent.
Step 2: Integrated Marketing Strategy
While the Brand was well-established, there was ample opportunity to define its platform strategy as well as identify opportunities to expand its brand building & marketing efforts.
This step also saw the launch of the Brand on TikTok, instantly creating an opportunity to for its most organically viral trend – users reviewing and showcasing the brand’s famous Coast Rider Stroller, garnering it over 20 million views, thousands of organic consumer content and skyrocketing sales across retail channels.
This was combined with a tailored Content & Communication plan that allowed the brand to blend UGC (Product Curiosity & Sales) + Industry-specific & thought leadership content (Brand Building) + Relatable Parent-specific Buckets & Expert Collaborations (Community Building) + Co-marketing ‘Giveback’ content spikes (Garnering new Consumers + Consideration).
The New Brand Identity + Look & Feel
Step 3: Campaign Streamlining & Opportunity Mapping
In this step, I helped the team utilize data-spotting to identify key opportunities through the yearly calendar for recurring and one-time campaign spikes.
This led to creating a marketing calendar that was a healthy mix of sustained activity & spike activity, based on consumer behavior, seasons and sales-based occasions & events.
Apart from owning first-for-itself campaigns over well-known topical days & creating storytelling communication, the brand partnered experts & influencers to create relatable, daily content. In addition, the 'mom-next-door' approach saw the brand own educational & uplifting mom content across platforms.
Dream On Me Goes Viral on
The launch of the brand on TikTok almost instantly gave rise to its first organic, consumer-initiated product campaign for its bestselling Coast Rider Stroller.
Thanks to the UGC-driven campaign that had organic celebrity love & over 20 million views, the stroller came to be known as the 'famous TikTok Stroller'.
The cascading effect hit other platforms like Instagram and YouTube, where consumers shared their reviews & unboxing of the stroller.
The direct impact was seen in skyrocketing unit sales & revenue, increasing Amazon reviews & ratings, giving it the tags of the #1 Rider in North America & the Leading Lightweight Stroller on Amazon.
The Stroller was also organically purchased & shared by celebrity influencers Kristy Scott & Niko Valdes, contributing to its virality & sales.
Kristy Scott
15.1 Mn Followers
@kristy.sarah
6.7 Mn Followers
@kristy.sarah
Shared the content over TikTok & Instagram | Listed the product on her Amazon storefront, pro-bono
Niko Valdes
3.7 Mn Followers
@babyfaceniko
724K Followers
@nikovaldes
Shared the content over TikTok & Instagram | Showcased product over multiple Instagram Stories
Step 4: Newsletter Strategy
As with its sister brand, Dream On Me was also sitting on a 100k+ database, creating an opportunity for a sustained Newsletter/Email Strategy.
The Strategy was segmented into new, repeat and dormant customers.
The overall strategy was to create regular blasts to enter consideration & drive purchase while creating a community-like feel for the parent via relatable content.
The content approach was a healthy blend of product features, consumer content & community-building pieces.
Given the vastness of the collection, Dream On Me's newsletter strategy put a larger focus on consumable product content to drive conversion & sales.
Lastly, there was a specific Subject Line strategy crafted to ensure audiences are hooked to increase open rates within cluttered inboxes..
Step 5: Aligning Retail Presence
In order to create a seamless brand presence, the brand’s presence of Retail touch-points, as well as retail-based marketing, was uplifted in terms of tonality and visual identity to align with the new direction.
This included the Amazon storefront & A+s for product branding, website & retailer website product content, and at-store collateral.
Step 6: Cultivating Brand Advocates + Influencer Marketing
As a brand, Dream On Me already had a lot of organic consumer content floating across platforms. In addition, being a legacy brand, there were a high number of loyalists and brand lovers.
Being an OPP (open price point) business, volume was key – this is also true for the number of advocates. Hence, the strategy focused on cultivating new customers into brand loyalists to keep the content fresh.
This approach also translated into the Influencer Marketing Strategy. The brand partnered with relatable, mid-weight to micro influencers to keep content churn rate high and relatable for the mass audience.
Key Wins
Instagram (primary platform) growth by over 95%
Launched the brand on Tiktok, enabling the largest viral, audience-triggered campaign for its bestselling Coast Rider Stroller, organically generating over 20 million views and 1000s of consumer-driven video content.
The trend also saw celebrity influencers purchase the stroller, review and create content with it, further triggering organic sale spikes.
Reached the Top 8 on Amazon in terms of Sales in the Baby Category during Black Friday through tailored Marketing & Creative Comms. Strategy.
Reached the Top of the Baby Furniture Category on amazon, beating out all primary competitors.
Increased emailer open rate rates from ~0.1% to 12% in first month of implementing the Email Marketing Strategy
Increased the Brand’s PR features in renowned publications like Forbes, Baby Center, What To Expect and more
Crafted the official PR strategy & docket for the Coast Rider Stroller, riding on the organic virality of the ‘celebrity’ product on TikTok
Launched 10+ key products & collections, including the Dream On Me x Fisher-price collection
Crafted the company’s official Green Promise, creating a foundation for its CSR & Eco initiatives
Expanded the brand’s social content formats by introducing collaborations, co-marketing activities, thought-leadership content, inclusive customer experience for the LGBTQ+ Community and more
Crafted & implemented a robust UGC, Topical & Content Creator-driven Campaign approach
Drove the Enfamil x Dream On Me licensing creative partnership and campaigns, reaching a newer database of over 10 million mothers
Integrated Marketing initiatives that resulted in multi-million dollars in revenue