Nara Smith went viral on TikTok for making everything from scratch. Croissants. Cereal. Gummy bears. The aesthetic is meticulous domesticity delivered with a softness that has accumulated tens of millions of followers. It is also, for a baby formula brand, the most precise available casting decision: find the woman the internet has decided represents the pressure to do everything perfectly, and show her failing at exactly one thing.
The Campaign
Baby Formula… Almost is a satirical thriller film starring Nara Smith, created for Bobbie, a US-manufactured European-style organic infant formula brand. The film opens with Smith in full panic mode. She is in sweatpants. She is sifting frantically through parenting books and internet forums. She is, for the first time in her public image, visibly not in control. The thriller format, with its quick cuts and rising tension, treats new-parent overwhelm as the genre it actually is.
At the lowest point of Smith’s rabbit hole, supermodel and mother of three Ashley Graham appears as a grounding voice of reason. Graham hands Smith a can of Bobbie and delivers the campaign’s closing line: “There’s no such thing as a perfect formula.”
The double meaning lands precisely. There is no perfect formula for parenting. There is, however, Bobbie formula, which is the thing that ended the spiral.
The Casting Logic
Nara Smith is a genuine Bobbie customer. She used European formula for her first two children but found the international shipping process tedious. She switched to Bobbie because it meets the same European-style standards while being manufactured in the United States. The campaign is not asking her to perform a character. It is asking her to reveal one she already inhabits in private: the mother who is meticulous about everything and still found something she could not control.
Smith described her own experience directly to Today: “I’m naturally just a very scheduled and meticulous person to where you probably will not find my house in a mess just because I don’t like that.” The campaign is built precisely around the gap between that self-description and the reality of early parenthood.
Ashley Graham’s involvement carries its own history. She was Bobbie’s first combo-feeding ambassador in 2022, appearing on a billboard as the first celebrity to publicly represent the combination of breastfeeding and formula feeding. Her return in this campaign as the word-of-mouth recommendation made physical is a reference to Bobbie’s own data: a large proportion of the brand’s customers come to it through another parent’s recommendation rather than through advertising.
The Brief Behind the Campaign
Kim Chappell, Chief Brand Officer at Bobbie, described the brand’s creative approach: “We only work with real Bobbie parents and we always try to lean into a slice of their cultural clout and where it can naturally intersect with our brand. We are constantly trying to stretch out of our comfort zone, start a conversation, and do so in a way that will bring our audience on a journey.”
The campaign addresses two specific cultural problems simultaneously. The first is the pressure on new parents, and particularly new mothers, to do everything correctly, which the internet has amplified rather than reduced. The second is the persistent stigma around formula feeding, which causes many parents who cannot breastfeed or choose not to exclusively breastfeed to feel inadequate. Bobbie’s positioning addresses both: the brand makes organic, high-quality formula using European-standard ingredients with no corn syrup, palm oil, or fillers, and it markets that product specifically in a way that treats formula feeding as a valid, informed choice rather than a compromise.
The Merchandise Extension
The campaign launched on September 16, 2026, across Bobbie’s organic social channels, CTV, TikTok, YouTube, and Meta platforms, alongside a Times Square billboard. A dedicated merchandise store launched alongside the film, featuring campaign-inspired items developed in partnership with We Are Not Really Strangers, including sweatshirts, baby tees, DIY cross-stitch kits, and Weezie burp cloths.
The merchandise converts the campaign’s cultural moment into objects that the community can carry forward beyond the film’s cycle. A parent wearing a campaign sweatshirt is participating in the same conversation Nara Smith started in the film: the one about the pressure to be perfect and the relief of finding something that works.
Campaign Name: Baby Formula… Almost
Agency Name: Not mentioned (Bobbie in-house)
Brand Name: Bobbie
Location: United States (TikTok, YouTube, Meta, CTV, organic social, Times Square billboard; launched September 16, 2026)
