Midway through the second quarter of a 2018 Jets vs. Browns matchup on Thursday Night Football, Jets running back Isaiah Crowell marched into the end zone for his second touchdown of the game against his former team. Crowell rubbed it in—literally—by pretending to wipe his butt with the football. The celebratory butt wipe made for good social media fodder, but NFL commish Roger Goodell didn’t take kindly to it, slapping him with a $13,369 fine.
The Jets lost that game, but Crowell would chalk up a W for his personal brand a few days later.
DUDE Wipes, the toilet paper substitute that inked a deal with Mark Cuban on Shark Tank, quickly spun the controversial celebration into an opportunity to share the limelight with Crowell. As soon as the story surfaced, they hooked him up with enough DUDE Wipes to last him the rest of the season.
“Thanks to @dudewipes I am now covered,” said Crowell in an Instagram post following the endorsement. “Never leave home without them.”
A wipe to remember. We’ve got you covered @IsaiahCrowell34 pic.twitter.com/8T2kszji4o
— DUDE Wipes (@DUDEwipes) October 2, 2018
News of the timely sponsorship went viral, with ESPN, Barstool Sports, Sports Illustrated,Yahoo Sports, The Washington Post, New York Post, Bleacher Report, and more covering the story.
This wasn’t just a one-off stunt, though. DUDE Wipes consistently makes headlines by forging opportunistic partnerships with athletes in almost every pro sports league, including MLB, PGA, NASCAR, NFL, and UFC. But the most impressive part is they’ve done it with a marketing budget dwarfed by their competitors in the men’s grooming aisle.
How? They hijack the news.
Brands these days shell out as much as six figures to simply have influencers plug products on Instagram. But brains behind DUDE Wipes aren’t interested in the pay-to-play model. Instead, they pounce when they spot DUDE-related news pegs, insert themselves into viral media narratives, and ride the free publicity train. That strategy, referred to by industry insiders as “newsjacking,” was popularized by publicist David Meerman Scott back in 2011. Over the past seven years, this approach has earned DUDE Wipes a staggering collection of press clippings that would make some pricey PR firms envious.
“A lot of brand marketers are stuck in the mindset that you need six- or seven-figure budgets to make a name for yourself,” says DUDE Products co-founder Sean Riley. “But if you have a keen eye for opportunities and move quickly, you can make a splash without spending a penny.”
Take DUDE’s collaboration with Arizona Diamondbacks setup man Archie Bradley for example. Last summer, Bradley divulged that he accidentally pooped his pants during a “nervous pee” seconds before taking the mound during a matchup against the Astros. As soon as the story surfaced, DUDE Wipes made the most of the moment.
“Our social team immediately sprung into action and hooked Archie up with enough DUDE Wipes to keep him pitching clean innings for the rest of the season,” the company stated in a blog post.
Like clockwork, the story was picked up by Yahoo! Sports, MSN, ABC, and a host of local publications.
Given their name, you might assume DUDE Wipes stick to marketing opportunities with male athletes, but you’d be wrong. Back in 2017 UFC fighter Justine Kish went viral after she defecated in the octagon during her match. Well, DUDE Wipes got in on that action too.
They couldn’t sponsor the back of Kish’s trunks as they did with fellow UFC fighter Tyron Woodley because the UFC subsequently banned the practice (DUDE Wipes being a #3 Worldwide Twitter Trend during the fight may have been a reason). Regardless, Justine still received a swag bomb of >DUDE Wipes for her trouble.
You can probably guess what happened next: the story made its way into The Huffington Post, Maxim, MMA Junkie, Uproxx, and of course, BroBible.
In a time where many brands will tap any random celebrity to ride their coattails, DUDE’s savvy, timely partnerships give them an air of authenticity, especially amongst brand-wary millennials. Could they have paid huge fees for Peyton Manning or Shaq to endorse their products? Maybe. Instead, they joined forces with Canadian Football League star Corey “Poop” Johnson. (Johnson earned the nickname from his teammates at the University of Kentucky after he said in an interview, “I try to poop, like, five times a day.”)
“Random celebrity endorses random product” is a snoozefest easily spotted by savvy consumers. But the right product matched with the right person at the right time—that’s worth talking about. And as DUDE Wipes has proven, reporters actually enjoy covering those stories rather than the out-of-context pitches that flood their inboxes.
As advertising on social media becomes increasingly saturated (and expensive), the future will belong to brands like DUDE Wipes that can sniff out earned media opportunities fast, and act on them even faster. Their scrappy marketing approach is not an exact science, by any means. It’s often a matter of timing and luck. But one thing is certain if you’re trying to sell anything these days: riding the wave of an existing media narrative is far more valuable than trying to start your own from scratch.
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The BroBible team writes about gear that we think you want. Occasionally, we write about items that are a part of one of our affiliate partnerships and we will get a percentage of the revenue from sales.