Why a diaper brand is disrupting sports advertising

The golf industry may be ready for a change. A diaper change, that is.

Coterie, a baby-care brand that sells products including diapers and wipes, is breaking into the sport with a PSA-style campaign about parental mental labor starring six-time PGA Tour winner Max Homa.

The centerpiece of the campaign is a print ad on the back cover of Golf Digest, which declares that “You never see diaper ads in golf magazines.” The text-only ad goes on to highlight the importance of changing the “status quo” of moms being treated as the default parent. The final line: “This is for the dads who can help us change things—diapers included.”

The campaign comes at a tumultuous time for the golf industry, which has for years been trending toward inclusivity and pushing to attract a younger crowd, but has also faced setbacks. Earlier this year, golf retailer and media company Good Good Golf released a controversial ad showing its male co-founder shoving a female creator to the ground; the spot prompted a wave of dialogue about how far the sport still has to go.

Coterie’s ad, while not a direct response to the Good Good scandal, is “more relevant than ever” as a result of the timing, Brittany Deems, Coterie’s VP of brand marketing, told us. It’s meant to raise awareness of the fact that mothers still do the majority of cognitive household labor—while simultaneously growing the brand’s reach among dads of young children.

“We didn’t think of this as a reaction in any way, but we thought of it as a way to justify the importance of talking to men, and in a way that really supports women,” Deems told Marketing Brew. “It was really [about] doing our part in how we can shift that narrative.”

Diaper Dialogue change

The idea for the Golf Digest print ad originated in one of Coterie’s Slack channels, Deems told us. One of the brand’s creative directors was talking about how the team “should really be having this conversation around the mental load with dads,” not just with moms, she said.

There was one challenge: About 90% of Coterie subscribers are women, as are more than 90% of its social media followers, Deems told us. That’s where Golf Digest came in. Magazine reps told Deems and her team that its audience overindexes in terms of dads and parents with kids in diapers, she said. Plus, golf is a “quintessential dad sport,” she added, so the opportunity felt right.

“You see a lot of brands taking full-page ads out in the New York Times to make statements,” Deems said. “We were like, ‘Who are we actually trying to reach with this?’ This isn’t a social post for us. It’s actually trying to reach a new demo…Showing up where dads are, and what we’re calling ‘attacking the algorithm,’ has actually been really successful in bringing men into the fold.”

Along with the print ad, Coterie is also sharing social content featuring Homa, who Deems said was already a Coterie user before the official partnership. One of the posts promotes a giveaway that includes a $1,000 spa gift card and merch signed by Homa in addition to, of course, diapers. (To enter, users have to follow the brand, like the post, and tag a dad.)

Deems hasn’t analyzed follower growth among men just yet, but she said Coterie’s engagement has spiked about 300% from September to October, with largely positive sentiment thus far.

Growing up

Coterie is still in its early days of sports marketing, but the golf campaign isn’t the brand’s first time tapping into sports culture. After the New York Knicks won the NBA championship in June, Coterie ran out-of-home ads outside subway stations along the parade route touting a study that found “major sporting events are associated with increased birth rates nine months later.”

“See you in ’27, Knicks babies,” the ads read. (Somehow, Coterie isn’t the only diaper brand targeting sports fans with ads hinting at procreation.)

The golf campaign, Deems said, is a “natural progression” of its work around the NBA championship.

“We’re trying to earn our right to where we play within the sports conversation,” she said. “We definitely understand that so many parents like sports, and so we’re like, ‘How do we fit into that in a way that feels different, and us, and a little bit more conversation-generating?’”

For Deems and her team, further sports marketing is on their 2027 radar. The brand is already working with former Los Angeles Chargers defensive end Isaac Rochell for its current campaign, and Deems said she is looking to find ways to speak to audiences beyond moms, which could include more work in sports.

“If we’re only advertising to women as it’s their responsibility to restock the diapers, that’s on us, too,” she said.