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October 1, 2025

Why Leaving Out Dad Hashtags is a Strategic Miss in Parenting Marketing

Hashtags aren’t quite the powerhouse they were in the early Instagram/Twitter days, but they are also more than throwaway add-ons. They’re signals of who a brand sees, values, and wants to engage with, and yet it’s common to see posts stacked with #momlife while #dadlife is nowhere in sight – even when the product itself is completely gender-neutral.

Take this post (right) from Amara Organic Foods, which excludes dads throughout its list of 24 hashtags. At first glance, this might seem harmless. But strategically, it’s a mistake. Here’s why.

Reinforcing Outdated Stereotypes

For decades, marketing has defaulted to “mom as the parent,” assuming mothers make all the household decisions. While moms are important, today’s parenting is far more balanced. Leaving dads out not only misrepresents reality but also reinforces the very stereotypes many consumers want brands to move beyond.

Missing Half the Market

We all know today’s dads are engaged: cooking, caregiving, shopping, and searching for parenting hacks online. Excluding dad hashtags sends the signal that a brand isn’t speaking to them. That weakens loyalty and narrows the potential audience.

Analytics Blind Spots

Some teams argue that moms dominate their current follower base, hence the reason why they push messages to them. But this becomes a self-fulfilling loop: if you never tag dads, you’ll never reach them. Inclusive hashtags expand reach and help build communities that reflect the real makeup of your customer base.

Brand Perception and Inclusivity

Consumers notice when brands ignore inclusivity, and today’s families want to see themselves represented accurately. A feed that skews exclusively toward moms – or sounds like it was written by one gender – looks tone-deaf, even when unintentional.

The fix is simple: use a balanced mix of parenting hashtags that acknowledge all caregivers. Inclusivity isn’t just good ethics, it’s good marketing. Companies that recognize dads in the parenting conversation will expand their reach, strengthen brand trust and stand out in a crowded market.

April 4, 2017

Cleaning up diapers: why the race for dads is on

In the world of diapers, there seems to be a sudden race to reach the long, undervalued segment of dads.

Although in some respects, the race might resemble that of a slow crawl.

Within the past month, we’ve seen the big three diaper makers – Pampers, Huggies and Luvs – all take intriguing steps toward speaking to the parent other than mom. Of course, that would be dad, the other parent who’s curiously inconspicuous from most diaper websites.

Pampers seems to be in the early lead, having quietly updated its prominent menu tabpampers2.jpg with little fanfare:  “Mommy Corner” was switched to “Parent Corner.”  Of course, Dad Marketing Headquarters noticed the change, and gave instant kudos for the fantastic, albeit minor one-word upgrade.  Fresh off its successful #PampersBabyBoard event, several dads there and elsewhere noticed the improvement and too offered their appreciation via social media.  Pampers still has a way to go to reach full parental inclusion, but tweaking a prominent communication tool like a website menu is a positive start.

Huggies, on the other hand, maintains its long-standing “Mommy Answers” menu tab, a huggies2section which ignores fathers as equal parents in more ways than one.  We’ve been in communication with its PR agency, who assures us that changes are on the way this summer.

Huggies is no stranger to controversy. Its 2012 “Have Dad Put Huggies to the Test” campaign backfired, causing its marketing team to embark on some serious damage control after one father started a “We’re dads, Huggies. Not dummies,” petition that garnered more than 1,000 signatures in less than a week.

huggies7And just this calendar year it maintained a web page at huggies.com offering the unabashed advice, “4 Ways to Get Dads to Do Diapers.”  That piece has since been removed.

Luvs also made a significant change last week:  one of its front page web sliders at luvs.com was altered after repeated nudging from our office.  It only took a simple edit to make dads everywhere feel included with its new self-proclaimed slogan:  “The Official Diaper of Experienced luvs7.pngParents.”  The only problem is, there’s other sliders on its landing page that contain other mom-only references, as well as others on its site that need updated, too.

These easy fixes are often at the core of the problem.  So often it’s a matter of a quick edit – many times a mere one word – that would make a noticeable difference.  In today’s ease-of-use content management world, they’re the kind of changes that anyone could make quick and painless within minutes.  While Huggies’ changes seem to be part of a full site-wide revision and overhaul, why wait to make uncomplicated, one-word adjustments?  Those straightforward, obvious fixes should be made right now.  All of this is part of a slow, drawn-out process and it doesn’t need to be this way.  Equality shouldn’t wait.

For now, at least a word of congrats to these diaper makers is in order.  But at the same time, no parent would let a child sit for days with an oopsie in its diaper.  So why should an exclusionary website sit unattended to, just the same?

The race is on to capitalize on the spending power of dads.  Who will win?  Keep up-to-date with this site and also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, where you can be certain we’ll stay on top of it.