Five Minutes with Mother Dirt

Mother Dirt has had phenomenal success since it launched in 2015. Can you describe how and why you started it and why your products are different for those who don’t know it?

Mother Dirt was born out of the biotech startup, AOBiome (now AOBiome Therapeutics). The core technology was developed by their Scientific Founder, David Whitlock. It is a live soil-based bacteria that once presumably existed on human skin but has been removed with modern hygiene. I joined the company to build out the brand, Mother Dirt, as a vehicle to have a conversation with the general public about what it means to be clean and healthy. The hero product, the AO+ Mist contains the live culture of Ammonia-Oxidizing Bacteria (or as we call it, the “peacekeeper bacteria”), and then we have supporting products of basic daily essentials, all formulated to be biome-friendly. They are screened and tested for their impact on the peacekeeper bacteria.

Although it is key for your positioning, your brand is not only about microbiomes : Mother Dirt is also about services, innovation, technology and sustainability. In a crowded marketplace how are you going to continue to keep ahead of the curve in a sector where the brand is so relevant?

It is important to keep the human aspect of our brand front and center: our customers. We have built our brand around universally shared human values (such as reconnecting with the child within that once played outside), and not scientific ones. The science for us will always be there, because it is important to us, but it is equally important to us to know when the consumer is open to take it in, if at all. Connecting emotionally first, whether with a value or a solution, is most important, especially with a challenging concept like bacteria.

There must have been challenges along the way. How did you overcome them?

By solving them one at a time. It is easy to get discouraged when looking at all challenges in aggregate. However, taking things one step at a time has allowed us to get much further than the odds in our favour would suggest.

Experience is all important nowadays. How is Mother Dirt creating and managing a positive and outstanding relationship with your consumers?

Building on my answer above, because we have kept the consumer in the center of our values, not surprisingly, one of the manifestations of this is that customer service has been central to our brand from the beginning. It has evolved with time – for example, in the beginning it was very high touch: we would reach out for phone calls, lots of surveys, etc. This is because we were looking to gather a lot of data around how they were using the product and what they were noticing. Since then, customer service has been less exploratory and more educational (more consumers asking questions as we have grown). Customer satisfaction ratings are one of the weekly metrics we look at and we have an incredible team that takes care of our customers to make sure they know how to use the product and are happy with the results.

Over the last 4 years Mother Dirt has grown very fast. How do you see it evolving in the next five to ten years?

We will continue to evolve our biome-friendly platform to continue building out our line of basic daily essentials. As part of this we will also continue to grow our understanding of our personal care products affect the skin microbiome. The big vision not only for Mother Dirt, but also the field, is to understand how we can create the next generation of products that work with, not against, out skin microbiome.

Listen to the FutureBrand Podcast for a full interview with Jasmina: