While many brands have backed away from X since Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform formerly known as Twitter, Dude Wipes is leaning in.
The flushable wipes brand continues to lean on crude social content like few other brands do. Its presence on the platform is seen through playful banter with QSR brands or its ability to tap into seemingly any cultural phenomenon at any time.
Dude Wipes’ ethos is pure toilet humor. If it isn’t talking about farts and dumps, then it isn’t talking at all. That kind of potty mouth performs well on X, and so, that’s where Dude Wipes devotes much of its time, cofounder Ryan Meegan said.
“For the whole community engagement and commenting game, X is number one, followed by a close second with TikTok,” he said. “[X] is just better for an ongoing conversation.”
It makes sense, then, that as one of the only remaining brands prioritizing the platform, Dude Wipes isn’t very concerned with brand safety. Meegan describes the brand as “an irreverent David vs. Goliath against big toilet paper,” the underdog and “the American dream” in a $13 billion category.
Still, there are places even it won’t go.
To better understand how the brand walks a fine line between offensive and problematic, Campaign US spoke with Meegan about Dude Wipes’ social media strategy and embodying the American dream as a poop company.
The following conversation was edited for clarity.
Campaign US: Describe Dude Wipes’ approach to posting on X.
Ryan Meegan: It’s a humorous, reactive approach to immerse ourselves in conversations that one might expect to find us in, or even better, not expect to find us in. [Consultant] Greg Baroth runs our social media and community management and does an amazing job at responding to conversations about food, especially if they’re about a person’s stomach not feeling well after having Taco Bell or Chipotle.
We go after big accounts where a lot of people will see our response and get a kick out of it, but there are just as many times when he’ll comment on an account with 300 followers after searching terms like tacos, burritos, pizza, you name it.
Why does it work to play around with other brands in that space?
We’re just being realistic. If you eat a crappy meal, odds are, we all know what’s going to happen.
It’s never out of malice. We’d love to partner with Taco Bell or Chipotle on some co-branded wipes and have fun with them. They would never do that, but I guarantee you they’re missing out on tons of earned media because the public would love it.
What do you make of the state of brand safety on X and how does that influence your approach to the platform?
There’s always going to be the larger corporate brands that are going to play it more safe. Given the political climate we’re in, brands are very uptight about not offending anyone. We’re not worried about that.
We don’t play in the political space because it’s not worth it to divide any group that could be a customer of ours. But at the same time, how we go about our messaging and bathroom humor, we are not afraid to offend people because we know it comes from a good place of trying to make jokes and have fun.
How big is your social team?
It’s Greg. Me and [president] Sean Riley chime in here and there and our creative director Andy Andersen gets involved as well. We’re all in a 24/7 text chain together that lets us talk about things that are going on online and in pop culture, sports and entertainment. Typically we have some sort of conversation like ‘go get ‘em, Greg,’ but more often than not he’s off doing his own thing. Greg is at the wheel 99.9% of the time.
He’s earned it. Before him, we tried a couple of third-party companies to take social over for us and we didn’t feel like they fully understood the brand or were putting out content that was indicative of what we wanted to face consumers.
It lets us move pretty nimbly. For example, a couple of weeks ago we started a partnership with Dan Orlowsky who, while he was on The Pat McAfee Show, his windshield wipers made a fart sound. X went nuts with it, and we quickly jumped in.
We not only commented but struck a deal with him and his team and got product to him within 24 hours. Within 48 hours, Dan posted and that went viral with more than a million views, thousands of likes, comments, shares and all that good stuff.
Brands that have to go through waves and waves of approvals would never be able to get that done.
How does X fit into your larger business strategy? What are your KPIs and how do you measure the impact of posting on your business?
It’s to gain the most impressions and engagement that we possibly can. We’re optimistic that we can go viral every single time we post. Is that realistic? No, but that’s our goal.
What’s been your best post, and what impact did it have from a business perspective?
RM: In a four-day period, we were a major sponsor of the WWE, we had the partnership with Dan Orlovsky kick off and we were the title sponsor of the Dude Wipes 250 Xfinity Nascar race. We were popping off everywhere and trending on social.
We’re a company that doesn’t always look for a return on investment out of social stuff. We’re not going to dig in and see what sales lift we got out of that. It’s going to the good and betterment of the company, in the grand scheme of things, when we get a huge amount of likes, impressions and shares.
We put brand marketing in one bucket and performance marketing in a completely different bucket. On the performance marketing side, we’re always looking at what we’re making for every dollar we spend. On the brand side, we don’t necessarily look for that stuff.
Do you work with any agency partners?
We do, they’re called Curiosity and they’re based out of Cincinnati. They just produced our first national media campaign that went live the first week of March. It’s the first time we’ve ever gotten into linear TV and legacy marketing. It felt like we’d graduated to that next step.
What role do they play in your social work?
Right now they’re getting us more organized with a posting schedule and content calendar. But they’re not creating content for us at the moment.
This article originally appeared on Campaign US.
