FridaMom

  • Brand Strategy
  • Campaign Strategy
  • Content Strategy
  • Origins Video
  • Photography
  • Motion Design

Brand Launch

Frida Mom came to East of Normal with a vision. Show new motherhood the way it really is.

They believed that a raw, honest depiction of the postpartum experience would connect with their audience in a way other maternity companies couldn’t —and they were right. East of Normal’s first Frida Mom spot, shot with a real new mother in a real house in the actual middle of the night, sent waves across social media and beyond. In a few short weeks it garnered millions of earned impressions and announced the brand’s arrival with a bang.

  • Brand Strategy
  • Campaign Strategy
  • Content Strategy
  • Origins Video
  • Photography
  • Motion Design

East of Normal’s work with Frida Mom earned the accoladed of honoree for Best Advertising, Media & PR: Branded Content in the 24th Annual Webby Awards. Let’s dive into how our work made an impact in greater detail.

Rejected by the Oscars,
shared by Moms everywhere

We didn’t set out to create a spot that would be rejected by advertising platforms and set off a firestorm of media attention, but… let’s just say that Frida Mom wanted to be provocative. If some platforms found our depiction of the postpartum experience too shocking, it would serve to foster conversation about why the experience of new motherhood is still considered taboo.

With this consideration in mind, it was vital our video content strike a delicate tonal balance. We had to show the postpartum experience in a way that might shock “the media,” but resonate strongly with individual mothers everywhere.

After the Oscars refused to show East of Normal’s Frida Mom spot, citing its “graphic” nature, a small comms push pointing out the ridiculousness of the judgement led to 4+ million earned views in just one week.

East of Normal’s video broke through into the discourse in a way that’s increasingly rare for established brands, let alone young upstarts.

Launch Campaign Collateral

Making a splash with our launch video was just one pillar of East of Normal’s brand launch strategy for Frida Mom.

While our flagship product for Frida was about making a statement to the world, our campaign as a whole was focused on appealing to the experiences and needs of millennial mothers. We knew how important it was to nail the brand’s tone, educate new customers, and provide a strong base of functional product support.

Frida Mom’s parent brand Frida Baby is well-known for its honest talk and biting humor, and we worked hard to apply those same sensibilities to postpartum products for mom. Our copywriters found a sweet spot infusing Frida Mom messaging with hip hop references - we understood that for the new millennial mom, references like this are instantly recognizable, fun, and nostalgic.

We recommended the brand speak as a “trusted friend”; the language we used and the collateral content we created hit this territory on the nose.

Chelsea Origins Video

The last pillar of launch content we created centered around Frida Mom founder Chelsea Hirschorn. In our quest to speak as a “trusted friend”, we realized that personifying the brand through Chelsea was a no-brainer. She’s smart, likable, and funny, and she just so happened to have accumulated hours of unvarnished home video over the course of her last pregnancy. Chelsea’s archives were the perfect raw materials for a brand origins video.

We leaned heavily on juxtaposing Chelsea’s professional polish with her pregnancy footage. After opening with a few seconds of rather traditional interview set-up, we jump cut to a grainy Chelsea in the throes of labor, howling in unbridled pain. In this one visceral moment, East of Normal communicated how Frida Mom sought to reshape the narrative of postpartum experience.