What happens when TikTok is your marketing department

In 2018, The Pink Stuff was little more than a home cleaning product with a cute name. 'The Miracle Cleaning Paste', as it was written on each pack, was sold by only two retail chains in Britain. At a factory near Birmingham, the Pink Stuff line operated for about two hours every month. That was enough.

“It was a brand with many applications,” says Henrik Pade, director of Star Brands, the company behind the product. “But no one used it.”

Actually, The Pink Stuff – which is, yes, bubblegum pink – had some fans. One of them was Sophie Hinchliffe, a then 28-year-old hairdresser in Essex, about 30 miles east of London. Mrs Hinchliffe had of course heard about The Pink Stuff on Instagram and started posting daily videos on her then new account, @mrshinchhome. All the videos were clips from her non-stop campaign to spruce up the house she had just moved into with her husband.

There was Mrs Hinch, as she called herself, using a toothbrush to scrub the grout in her bathroom. Here she was polishing her candlesticks. If it was stained, The Pink Stuff would clean it, she told her small but growing audience. Don't buy new tiles, she advised. Spend 99p and restore the old one. She also recommended other brands. The Pink Stuff was simply a favorite.

“Hinchers,” as her devotees soon dubbed themselves, found something meditative and satisfying about watching a chatty, glamorous, yet relatable woman rooting out dirt. And these people weren't just gawkers. They were looking for product tips from the scrubber chef.

By the time 'hinching' became a verb – defined as 'cleaning vigorously' – in Britain, The Pink Stuff's days of obscurity were over. Stores that sold it found customers waiting for the supply carts to come by so they could grab all the small containers they needed. Or more.

“I thought, 'Guys, what have you done? I can't get my hands on one!'” Ms. Hinchliffe said in a video interview. “Then The Pink Stuff contacted us and said, 'Would you like us to send you some?' And then I got to know the whole influencer world.”

Ms Hinchliffe, who has 4.8 million followers on Instagram, never switched to TikTok – “I struggle to keep up with one platform,” she explained – but The Pink Stuff did. Pink Stuff-related videos have been viewed more than two billion times on TikTok, Star Brands says.

The viral bump

The Pink Stuff joins a jumble of once-obscure products transformed by the internet, and TikTok in particular. It's a selection that includes the Hoan Bagel Guillotine, the Stanley tumbler and Carhartt hats, to name just three. However, sales increases achieved through online glory may be fleeting. Just because a new product is being hoisted aboard the viral train: look, it's the Dash Mini Waffle Maker! – doesn't mean it will stay there.

According to Star Brands, which started tracking online mentions of The Pink Stuff a year and a half ago, the hashtags are viewed by about 20 million people every week. Sales have quadrupled since 2018 to about $125 million annually, a modest amount compared to giants in the field such as Clorox, which has annual sales of more than $7 billion. But no one at the company's headquarters in Leeds would have thought this number was possible just a few years ago. The factory now runs three Pink Stuff lines throughout the day, with a workforce that has more than doubled. The product is now sold in 55 countries and is available at Walmart, Home Depot and Amazon.

“We don't spend money on traditional advertising,” Mr Pade said. “It's completely viral. That's a bit scary because we don't have any control over the message about our brand.”

Marketing experts say this leaves The Pink Stuff in a precarious situation. When the fortunes of a previously unknown commodity are made through social media, they are at the mercy of forces that can be monitored but not managed.

“The goal should be loyalty, not virality,” says Marina Cooley, professor of marketing practice at Emory University. “Virality is dangerous because it is volatile and there is no stickiness to it. People are excited about the first interaction and then look forward to the next viral thing.”

The original version of The Pink Stuff was launched in 1931. It was just as pink as it is today, but had a decidedly less charming name, Chemico Bath and Household Cleaner, and came in a gray glass jar. In 1948 it was packaged in a pink tin, but it was not until 1995 that the manufacturer based itself entirely on the color of the product by adopting the current name. New owners took over Star Brands in 2018, hoping to revive some cleaning products. They soon hired the brand's first in-house social media guru, but the sales needle barely moved until the Mrs. Hinch started. The company only contacted her after she had gained a large following. (They offered her a free product, but didn't pay her for her endorsement.) It was all a coincidence. “You can't plan to go viral,” Mr. Pade said.

Welcome to #CleanTok

As TikTok grew in popularity, Pink Stuff hashtags became part of #CleanTok, or videos that offer tips, tricks, and hacks for sanitation folks. It has been one of the platform's most resilient niches for years. To date, there have been roughly 110 billion views of #CleanTok videos worldwide, far ahead of #BeautyTok, out of 78 billion global views, according to figures provided by TikTok to Unilever.

A typical #CleanTok video features a so-called 'cleanfluencer' – some with more than a million followers – working over a sink, a pan or a floor with a particular cleaner and brush. There are mostly before and after images, making these little vignettes a cross between a commercial and an episode of “Law & Order.” They start with a mess and end with a verdict.

“People find it very calming,” says Lori Williamson, a cleanfluencer recently living in Toronto more than a million views on a video of her cleaning a hairdryer. Others say it's motivating.

She works with twenty brands, but not with The Pink Stuff. She heard about it after it was showcased by Mrs. Hinch, but before Star Brands ramped up production, which it did in 2020, and bought a North American distributor, which it did last year.

“It cost $24 to get it,” Ms. Williamson said. “I was so angry.” (It now costs $4.99 on Amazon and is sold in about 30,000 stores worldwide.)

How well does The Pink Stuff work? The vast majority of #CleanTok videos are stories of triumph – The Pink Stuff conquers every surface of a bathroom, The Pink Stuff breathes new life into a sneaker. Someone in the comments section invariably asks the same question: does the pink stuff have a name?

There are also Pink Stuff mistakes, such as pots that remain covered in caked-on dirt. One woman warned that The Pink Stuff didn't fix the scratches on her car, something it wasn't designed to do.

Wirecutter, a consumer review site owned by The New York Times Company, tested The Pink Stuff and concluded it was good, but overhyped.

A happily ever after ending

Ms Hinchliffe started posting videos to manage her anxiety and to help her connect with others, like herself, who felt more comfortable at home than interacting with strangers.

“If I noticed myself starting to get a little anxious or panicky for no reason at all, I would grab my mop, or grab my vacuum, or my rag, and just put on the music and go for it. she said. “And I found myself no longer focusing on what I was worried about.”

With her fame, Penguin Random House came along. Her 2019 debut, “Hinch Yourself Happy,” was the first of a handful of books to reach No. 1 on The Sunday Times bestseller list. Brands also called. Mrs Hinchliffe is now working with Procter & Gamble to create Mrs Hinch versions of cleaning products. Once a year she travels to the company's offices in Brussels to refine their fragrances. Today she lives with her husband and children in a five-bedroom farmhouse, along with a dog, chickens and alpacas.

A happily ever after ending is harder to predict for The Pink Stuff. It no longer depends on Mrs. Hinch, but if the goal is to create a sustainable product, Star Brands still has some work to do, said Professor Cooley of Emory University.

“It doesn't sound like there's an adult in the room running the cult,” she said. “There needs to be someone dictating a communications strategy – working with influencers, working with retailers.”

Four years ago, when Gen Zers discovered Vaseline, she noted, Unilever created a handful of new versions of the 152-year-old Vaseline, such as Vaseline Gluta-Hya, which was touted as ten times “more glowing” for the skin. than vitamin C. In other words, the company targeted the new audience.

Star Brands' Mr Pade says The Pink Stuff deals with influencers, but there is no point in trying to control them. The fairing design has been tweaked a bit, and the company has a four-person social media team to monitor hashtags and produce internal posts. Otherwise, the Pink Stuff convoy will drive itself. Supporters of the brand can spot sponsored content from a mile away, Mr. Pade said, and they don't like it.

“Interest will wane at some point because the popularity of cleaning will be overtaken by sex or drugs,” he predicted. “But as soon as people hear about The Pink Stuff on social media, they try it.”

Audio produced by Tally Abecassis.