Why skin care brand Tree Hut is hiring Bakery as its first agency of record

Skin care brand Tree Hut has amassed more than 2.5 million followers across TikTok and Instagram with the social-first marketing strategy it has developed over the past three years. Now, Tree Hut is looking to extend its online success to offline marketing mediums, including event activations and TV, by appointing the independent creative agency Bakery as its first agency of record to spearhead the expansion of its marketing strategy. “Up until now, we haven’t done a lot of consumer-focused marketing,” Jon Song, CEO of Tree Hut’s parent company Naterra International, told Ad Age. “We’ve really allowed our community to talk about Tree Hut for us in the digital ecosystem.” Also read: Bakery thrives by continuing to make things people want As of writing, the hashtag #TreeHut has appeared on nearly 103,000 TikToks (with hundreds of millions of views), many of which are from beauty influencers sharing hauls of the brand’s viral body scrubs, or reviewing seasonal fragrances and new skin care products from Tree Hut. @treehut We heard you besties and they’re finally here! 🤩 #treehut #fragrancetiktok #treehutcollection ♬ original sound - tothefullest “But now, we feel like there’s a great opportunity to take the authenticity that we’ve developed with our followers and create an overall brand message that hits across our marketing platforms and channels—on the shelf at retailers, on social media and through our upcoming marketing activations,” Song said. “We’ve got this viral love on social media, and it’s time for us to start with our first national brand awareness campaigns hitting up the cool stuff outside of the social media space.” Tree Hut’s pivot to a broader, multimedia marketing strategy comes as a handful of other social-first brands, such as Duolingo and e.l.f. Cosmetics, have made similar shifts to new mediums over the past several months. Duolingo, for instance, has increasingly expanded its marketing efforts to TV and movie theater spots, as well as stunts at concerts, mobile premieres and other pop culture moments. E.l.f., too, made the jump to TV with its first national Super Bowl ad earlier this year. “The biggest thing we noticed when we first started talking to Tree Hut is that they are this enormous brand that has almost no brand equity,” said Jaqueline Thompson, managing director at Bakery, which landed the Tree Hut account in early September. “They’re the number one seller of body scrubs in Ulta, Target and Walmart. People have it in their shower, but they don’t really know what the brand is … The factors are all there, and now it's about really helping people connect with the brand itself and amplify what they're already doing on social.” Since its launch in 2002, Tree Hut has largely handled its marketing in-house, aside from brief relationships with several agencies for individual projects, Song said. As Tree Hut’s AOR, Bakery will oversee the brand’s experiential and event marketing; video production and photography; and print, digital and social media campaigns, according to a PR representative for Bakery. Even before hiring the Austin, Texas-based creative shop last month, Tree Hut had already begun testing a few new marketing strategies. In August, Tree Hut hosted its first activation at Lollapalooza, inviting influencers such as Davis Burleson and Tiffany Baira to join the brand at the Chicago music festival in exchange for social content. And in March 2023, the brand held its first-ever pop-up event in New York, themed around self-care routines. @treehut Holding back tears! We ❤️ you Chicago!! #treehut #treehutcollection ♬ original sound - Tree Hut Tree Hut is “looking to lean heavily into” experiential marketing through its new relationship with Bakery, Song said, including as part of a holiday marketing push. He declined to share further details about the upcoming holiday campaign. Last week, just a few weeks after selecting Bakery as its AOR, Tree Hut also appointed Bakery’s sister agency, Ken Media, as its first media agency, Song said. “We haven’t actually worked with an outside media agency in terms of paid media before, and so we felt like, because the budding partnership with Bakery was so strong, this would be a great opportunity to also delve into paid media support” across social media and display ads, he said. Tree Hut isn’t necessarily aiming to stray from its core consumer base of Gen Z and millennial women by moving some of its marketing offline, Song said. Bakery will help the brand continue to hone its social strategy and reach more consumers in that existing demographic, Thompson said, adding that “there's still even a large market” for Tree Hut among those consumers. At the same time, though, the agency will also be “looking at potential demographics and areas [Tree Hut] isn’t really touching, from other age ranges to being more gender neutral,” she said. “[Tree Hut] is trying to get to be one of the top beauty brands—not just body scrubs, but beauty brands,” Thompson said. “So, now, it’s about how we elevate them in that way, to where people seek out everything they're doing and want to identify with that brand.” Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs

Why skin care brand Tree Hut is hiring Bakery as its first agency of record

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