The Hate Stains Co.
Building a viral darling into a national retail powerhouse.
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For the better part of two years, I owned the voice of Miss Mouth's Messy Eater Stain Treater — a stain remover with more personality than most cleaning aisles have seen. I wrote the packaging, the product pages, the ad copy, and the tone that made "a safer choice for your family" feel fun instead of preachy. Playful where it could be, persuasive where it counted, and always sounding like the brand parents actually trusted.
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Picture a two-person team launching a brand into every Walmart in America. That was us. I wrote, I art-directed, I concepted, I briefed, I said "Yeah, I can do that" a lot — and we punched like an agency ten times our size.
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I didn’t just write the ads for this one, I made them pay. On Walmart connect, I ran our paid search strategy. From writing the copy and briefing designers to a lot of AI-assisted digging through the data to pinpoint what worked best. The result was over $1.4M in sales, RoAS scaled past 4X, and 72% of orders from new customers.
One insurgent brand.
Every touchpoint.
From brand voice and packaging copy to streaming TV, full-funnel creative, and retail displays — the chance to throw the kitchen sink at a brand made for life's messiest moments felt fitting.
Between 2022 and 2025, I helped grow The Hate Stains Co. and its star product, Miss Mouth's Messy Eater Stain Treater, from a scrappy internet upstart into an insurgent challenger nipping at heritage giants like Tide and OxiClean. What started as straightforward copywriting for Amazon and DTC quickly grew into end-to-end creative direction, performance marketing, and campaign management.
I was lucky to have a hand in just about every angle of the glow-up. I partnered with packaging designer (Chelsea Van Beek) on fresh, new retail-ready packaging, steered creative production for everything from product detail pages and retail displays, managed paid search campaigns, and consistently churned out new ads and campaign concepts for our evolving retail presence.
At one point — our growth was so disruptive that it forced one “big CPG” competitor to pivot their creative strategy and acknowledge our position as the "Leading Kids Stain Remover." Not bad for an insurgent brand. Spoiler alert: They eventually bought the brand.
One voice, every medium, national scale.
With the brand voice and identity in a great place, retail-ready packaging, and full-funnel campaigns ready to go — it was time to hit the shelves.
I led the end-to-end creative for Miss Mouth's national launch into Target and every Walmart in the country with optimized PDPs, ad creative, in-store displays, and Walmart Connect all pulling in the same direction.
Having proved that TV could work for the brand with our earlier streaming spot — this was the first time we got to bring our dream to life of a real life “Miss Mouth”.
With the help of talented teams at Canvas Retail, MPG (Market Performance Group) and the Scratch Collective — what could have been a messy process was a resounding success.
Retail readiness research, shameless alliteration & the birth of “Mom’s Magic”
For our first shot across the bow of the “big box” stain fighters, we used Nielsen category research and consumer data to identify what mattered most to our buyers: safety, efficacy, and trust – all anchored by the brand’s EPA Safer Choice Certification.
We were selling to a largely millennial audience willing to spend more on a cleaner product, so our goal was to tap into what they cared about. Combined with review after review swearing the stuff “works like magic," and a slice-of-life approach to hook them, the campaign became built on proof, relatability, and personality.
This spot (and a cornucopia of alternative hooks and platform-specific cuts) ran on streaming TV, Amazon Ads, Meta, and beyond.
Times Square Billboard
& Taxi Cab Toppers
Holiday Hazard #001-100
With the holidays and our national Walmart launch landing around the same time, we toyed with the idea of digital out-of-home in Times Square. Just about everyone's experienced a messy relative ruining the holidays — so why not put one fifty feet tall over Broadway?
With the size and format in mind, I expanded on the idea to feature Holiday Hazards #001 - #100, with dozens of relatable, human moments where stains feature prominently — starting with the Meatball Wielding Grandpa.
The idea was to eventually expand this series beyond the holidays to evoke the relatable stains New Yorkers and humans everywhere experienced. From the “mystery subway stain” and “the dollar slice drop” to “ the deli dribble”.
From search, to social, to store.
“Life Gets Messy” Meta Ad: Stains Happen Around the Clock
Part of the national retail launch campaigns for Target and Walmart. Originally pitched as a loading screen-style bumper ad for Youtube, Meta, and TikTok. Concept, copy & production brief by me; animation by Alvin Portillo.
With the “Works Like Magic” tagline solidified on the front of the bottle, and top of funnel campaigns chugging away — my next focus was to feed our teams with concepts & creative to test on search and social, while capturing and optimizing every inch of retailer real estate possible.
“Life Gets Messy” Social Ads: Lunchtime Misadventure
Part of the national retail launch campaigns for Target and Walmart. Concept, copy & production brief by me; animation by Alvin Portillo.
A/B Testing Main Images
Walmart.com isn’t Amazon. Different rules mean different tactics — and when I noticed our clickthrough and conversion rate on paid campaigns could be better I started looking for ways to improve. So I dug into what was possible and rolled out new main images with simple copy and our strongest USP to boost conversion by 20%.
Storefront Copy & Design
Walmart Connect copy, strategy, design, and campaign setup/optimization.
Packaging, Point of Sale & Product Launch
After our initial splash in Walmart and Target — product innovation was the next target. This began with products made to directly compete with category giants and gave me the opportunity to bring the Miss Mouth’s voice to a new “deep cleaning” product for the “deep $#!&” life tosses into your hamper.
Pre-production render for Walmart Line Review meeting
Side caps for “Back to School” season at Walmart stores across the country were a fun opportunity to grab the attention of shopping parents who know all too well about the stains their kids bring home every day.
The numbers don’t lie.
I started as a senior copywriter writing for Hate Stains and other brands across our portfolio, as part of a talented team of marketing and creative pros. Over time, I took on more and more — until I was effectively one part of a two-person creative team, owning a huge piece of the creative and growth-marketing pie: copywriter, art director, campaign manager, and — when it called for it, designer.
The last year taught me to be the scrappy, learn-anything, AI-powered, human-focused marketer the brand needed — with a hand in everything from packaging, POS displays, and pitch decks to advertising copy and the campaigns that drove sales online and in store.
In roughly ten months, the work drove $1.27M in attributed sales on $464K of ad spend (2.75x blended RoAS) and ~$1.46M in total omni-channel sales.
I’m proud to have been uniquely positioned to both create the assets and run the campaigns that helped make it happen.
During this time:
I built an acquisition engine showing new, incremental sales — with 72% of attributed sales coming from new-to-brand customers
I held 53.8% top-of-search impression share on "stain remover" (the core category term).
I achieved category beating RoAS of 2.75x (search), with my top display campaign reaching a staggering 20X RoAS.
Became a thorn in the side of my legacy, big CPG competitors.
True story: after the brand was acquired by our competitor, I met with the team to hand over my “playbook” of paid search strategies. When I asked about our brand going toe-to-toe with them — one (very kind) marketing manager quipped, “thank GOD that’s over!”
