The Huggies marketing department is full of geniuses

It is my belief that the smartest marketing minds in the country all work for diaper companies. I have no doubt of this.

These people are charged with selling a product that is mostly plastic and collects human waste. At first it actually sounds kind of easy. I mean, here are the facts:

  1. Parents will need several of these every day while their children are young.
  2. See number 1.

That’s right, unless you’re some sort of dirt-worshiping savage that plans to use those organic, expensive, rinse wash and re-use cloth diapers (might as well be bed sheets) you will need to buy disposable diapers. A lot of them. (Also do people who plan to use cloth diapers know what babies do in them? Gross) 

My son goes through an average of 8 diapers each day or so. Even if he was fully potty trained at 2 (and I’m pretty sure Einstein was still crapping himself at 2) that would be 5,840 diapers. Could this be true? I searched the inter-webs and found a lot of conflicting data on the subject but the numbers were anywhere from 4K to 12K in the first few “precious” years of life. Seems like an easy enough product to market.

This could lead you to think that marketing diapers would be an easy gig. Not true.

There are exactly 8,297,641 different diaper companies out there (ok, not that many, but  a bunch). Marketers for this product need to work hard to distinguish their brands from their endless array of competitors.

So the devil is in the details. Marketing geniuses have spent decades getting us to pay attention to things like absorbency, size, softness, irritation, edges, leak barriers, layers, ease of use, functionality, sensitivity, longevity, nighttime effectiveness, activity effectiveness, and on and on and on.

Diapers at their core exist to collect poop. You would think that for something like that would go with the cheapest option but no. Because of all we now know we go for the ones that we think work the best. We justify the added expense because we are doing what the diaper companies tell us is “best for our babies.” At the end of the day we’re all suckers for keeping our babies happy. And they are most happy in things with happy little names. Names like: Papers Swaddlers

Notice the happy baby - must be happy because it is being swaddled by its diaper.

 

and Huggies Little Snugglers

message: you baby will only sleep in our diapers

If after all of this you still aren’t sure how smart the marketing folks at these companies are  then see my last image.

Make no mistake - we bought some of these. Surfs up!

Side note – Men, if you know only one thing about diapers: the number on the side of the box signifies the weight of your child, not how much the diaper will hold.

Pat Lemieux

About Pat Lemieux

Pat has it all, family, big old house, dogs, a young son and a quarter-life crisis. He blogs about trying to be who he has always been and be who he now needs to be. He enjoys 90's grunge metal, tasty local brews and the outdoors.