Influencer marketing is a game without rules. It’s a risk-versus-reward marketing approach that typically comes without guaranteed results. But when a truly influential influencer shares a brand with the right audience, in exactly the right way, the results can be enormously trajectory-changing for that brand. Dad Dressed Me proved it.
Launched in early 2025, the retro-cool kidswear brand plays on millennial parents’ nostalgia for the good old days, reinventing styles from their childhood scrapbooks to form supercool high-quality clothes for their little ones. (A must-mention: their brand voice was developed, and copy was written, by the Lovenote copy studio.)
The brand aimed high — even before day one. Securing mega-influencer Tammy Hembrow’s mailing address before the brand had officially launched, founder Natalie Field rushed to finalise every detail that would ensure Tammy truly loved the package she was about to receive. The results were next level.
Not only did Tammy dress her youngest, Posy, in multiple Dad Dressed Me outfits — she shared, posted and tagged the brand across her feed and Stories to 17+ million followers repeatedly over a number of days. Dad Dressed Me saw results in their social media statistics, which directly translated to sales, securing the brand’s place as one to watch (and wear) in the competitive kids’ clothing industry.
We spoke to founder Natalie Field about how she made this difficult-to-achieve influencer marketing moment happen — and what happened for her brand once it did.
Aiming high to reach 17 million pairs of eyes
Why play it ‘safe’? Why start at a micro-level? In her mission to build the brand right, Natalie’s first port of call was one of the most admired, and most followed, mum-influencers. “Tammy, in my eyes, is an elite influencer in Australia. I’m a fan of her as a business woman and as a mum. I picked her because I thought: let’s go high. Why shouldn’t we aim for the highest?”
As for how Natalie made the initial connection to Tammy, she explains: “I saw she had her management’s email linked in her bio. When people have their management linked, that is the easiest way to communicate that you want to send them products — instead of trying to DM and reach out yourself, because they don’t ever respond.”
Inside the perfect pitch email
Finding contact information is typically the easy part — it’s what you do with it that matters. Natalie strategised the perfect pitch email, making it both personal and practical. “I prepared a really great email using our brand voice. I thought, when this email gets opened, I want to make it as easy as I can, so there won’t be much back and forth.”
She shared details about Dad Dressed Me: “I told them who we are. I shared that we’re a new brand launching soon; bold, no beige. I shared all the key exciting points about the brand.”
Then turned her attention back to Tammy and family: “I made it really personal. Because I followed Tammy and knew a bit about her life, I could elaborate on what I think is great that she’s achieved, and what I admired about her as a business woman, hence why I wanted to give her and Posy some of our stuff.”
She made it easy for Tammy’s management team to understand what she was requesting: “In the title of the email, I wrote: ‘A special gift for Posy.’ I said, this is what I think Posy will look cute in. I sent photos of items I thought would suit her. So when they saw the email, they knew straight away what I wanted. They didn’t have to click on my website to look at the products. I gave them everything they needed to make it easy.”
Natalie did not have to wait long for a response. “I emailed in the afternoon, and I checked my emails the next morning. They had responded.”
Next, management requested a second glance to ensure the brand was fit for their influencer client. Natalie explains: “They asked to view my website, which was password protected at the time, so I gave them the password. They said they loved everything, and sent me Tammy’s mailing address right away.”
The package that led to the posts
Mega-influencer’s address, secured. Products, perfected and selected. Natalie turned her attention to making a memorable impression on Tammy when she opened her Dad Dressed Me package — a challenge when the brand had barely been on the market for weeks.
“You never know when the moment is going to come. In hindsight, it would’ve been better if that moment came now, but you can’t plan these things, you have to roll with it as you go. And once I knew some pretty high profile families were interested in being gifted some of my products, I had to accelerate things within the business. I made sure we had our branding, packaging and everything ready.”
Packing her products into a branded mailer with logo-decorated wrapping paper and a handwritten note in the brand’s voice, Natalie’s personalised approach continued: “I wrote a personal note to Posy in the package. It was something like: Dear Posy, we’ve picked out some special outfits for you to rock. We mentioned something about being in line with her fashion icon mum, and how she can be cool like her.”
The package was sent. The only thing left to do was wait.
When millions of people turn their attention to your brand
Some days change your life. Some moments change your brand. Natalie recalls: “The first post came about three weeks after I sent the package to them. It was a bit of a delay, which I expected. But I woke up one day and she’d posted.”
The first post from Tammy was a sweet, heart-warming family video on the beach — with a dancing, smiling Posy dressed head-to-toe in Dad Dressed Me. “Tammy had made a TikTok and video on Instagram. I showed my husband and he said: you could not have asked for a better video, that is so cute. I thought, damn, it’d be so nice if she had tagged us, but that’s okay. This is still really good. I can run with this and use it to my advantage for the business.”
It was a fantastic moment for the brand — and the lack of @daddressedme_ tag did not signal the end of the line. “We had a bit of a brainstorm, like, what are we going to do? She hasn’t tagged me, but I can still make a video about it. I decided to make a TikTok and let everyone know what it felt like waking up to see our products on little Posy.” This authentic, conversational approach matched the founder-led organic social media efforts that had been compounding for Natalie in the weeks prior.
But, surprisingly, the collaboration didn’t end there. The product was so perfectly matched to Tammy and Posy — and the personalisation and branded details so strong — that Tammy’s posts continued. “Later, I went out to dinner and as I was opening my phone, I saw the notification pop up: Tammy Hembrow tagged you. I was like, oh my god.”
Over the following days, Tammy repeatedly shared photos and videos of Posy living in her Dad Dressed Me pieces, sharing multiple outfits across her Stories, TikTok and Instagram feed. She began to tag the brand in many follow-up pieces — driving followers, viewers and sales towards the brand. But the most rewarding part for Natalie? “The happiest thing about it all was that my products and designs were good enough to be worn by a high profile family. I had created something they loved.”
A flood of followers and the follow-up sales
It’s not always clear at first glance which influencers truly have influence — whose Stories are seen and which personalities have the most pull. But the effects of collaborating with Tammy were significant.
Natalie explains: “We definitely saw results. In the last week, we’ve gained 1,500 Instagram followers.” At the time of writing, the brand now has 3,300 Instagram followers, 1,200 TikTok followers, and counting. “Our followers are definitely linked to influencers posting. You’ll see a big influx.”
Did the followers, engagement and attention on social media translate into sales? Natalie explains, “Yes. Especially the outfit Posy was wearing.”
It turns out these consumers were using influencer content to shop, not just get inspired, an effect that has been proven as Natalie repeats these results with other notable influencers. She explains: “The biggest sales we’ve seen were from when Ellidy Pullin and Chloe Fisher posted the brand. Those sales were in correlation to an outfit; people bought the outfit the influencers’ kids were wearing. Sometimes they added a couple of things, but they just wanted that exact outfit.”
“When I was packing orders that weekend, it was literally just Tropical Trip, Tropical Trip, Tropical Trip.” Referring to a retro holiday-inspired colourway named by Lovenote, Tropical Trip rounds out the brand’s first collection of recognisable patterns, including other nostalgic titles like Flower Child and Just Keep Swimming. “The orders were all basically the same size as well; the size Ellidy’s daughter Minnie was wearing. People wanted it, they loved it.”
While a new, widespread audience flocked towards the brand, another unexpected effect occurred. The audience that existed prior to Tammy’s posts began to cheer harder and louder for Natalie and Dad Dressed Me, rallying around her founder-led content while deepening their connection to the brand.
“The biggest thing was building a sense of community with the people who were already following me. After Tammy posted, they started hyping me up and saying, have you seen this? They couldn’t believe it. People were commenting how they had bought that outfit already, saying their daughters were now matching with Posy.”
Natalie credits this community-feel to her decision to show up as herself on the Dad Dressed Me socials. “When I first started, I was scared to get onto social media because I felt I had to be perfect, put makeup on, have my hair look a certain way, look like my best self. But once I got over that, I started getting on more, talking and replying to everybody that wrote to me. I was messaging people and making friends.”
She shares proudly: “The community you build becomes the biggest supporter of your brand.”
A repeatable formula to grow from gifted collabs
Natalie’s determined approach to not only reach Tammy, but become a memorable brand in the influencer’s eyes, has turned into a formula she repeats with other noteworthy names. “Ellidy Pullin and Chloe Fisher have tagged me. I had been messaging Ellidy for months, trying to contact her. She didn’t have an email listed, so this was through DMs, saying, ‘hey, I really want to send you some stuff. I think Minnie would love it — because I see her wearing cool outfits. I think we have some products that are up her alley.’ And then I constantly kept going.”
Once again, the moment came suddenly: “One day I woke up and overnight Ellidy had responded to my message and said oh my god, yes, we love everything. Here is my address.”
Natalie was repeatedly getting tagged by big-name influencers by using gifted collaborations — not paid. The question on every founder’s mind: how? “You have to lose all sense of embarrassment because if somebody doesn’t respond, you just have to keep writing messages. You’d think after three messages you should be like, okay, they’re not interested. But the amount of requests and things that come into their inbox is overwhelming for them. If you are trying to give products to people you really admire, you have to be passionate and believe they will love it. Just keep going.”
Besides relentless determination and belief in one’s brand, are there any technical tricks that can help your brand rise above other requests? Natalie shares: “On Instagram, you can respond to their Stories, which is good because Story replies will go into their inbox, not message requests.”
The natural evolution of an influencer marketing strategy
Natalie’s results are not only based on determination and ambition, but a willingness to put her products where her goals are — that is, her willingness to gift products far and wide, considering it a clever marketing cost rather than lost inventory. “When I had 300 followers, my goal was to get the brand out there to anyone, even if it cost me. My strategy was to go wide. I was gifting and asking what they thought about it, saying ‘did you take any photos, can you send them to me?’”
She approached this strategy knowing and accepting that oftentimes she may receive nothing in return: “You never know when they’re going to post, or if they’re going to post, which is the gamble. You have to be willing to lose that product. So as long as you like the creator, you like what they’re posting, and they align with your brand, then it doesn’t matter. You’re just happy they like it and they’ve said yes. Or they might have a thousand followers, but they make a really great video that you can use.”
Whether or not the product was shared publicly, Natalie explained how she got value from every opportunity: “Doing it this way, products are getting tested. You might get feedback about sizing or quality. It’s valuable stuff, and you just need to get your brand out there.”
Naturally, as the brand grows and builds its fan base, Natalie has given herself permission to be more selective when it comes to collaborations. “For my next collection, I plan to ask for specific deliverables from people who want to work with us. My brand has a bit of momentum now, and I want to be more strategic with the marketing of the next collection. I want photos taken a certain way — that sort of thing.”
Would she invest in paid social media collaborations, or stick to what already works? Natalie shares: “I plan to continue with gifted collaborations over paid, because I feel gifted is more genuine — they don’t owe you anything.”
“If they’re posting, it’s because they really like the product, and personally, I’m not going to buy something if I see an ad or sponsorship deal. I feel like those are forced and cringey. I want to see that somebody is genuinely wearing some cool outfits because they like them. They’re styling it in their own way, putting their own touch on it, and they think it’s a cool thing to put on their kids. Not because I’ve paid someone 10 grand to do an ad.”
The months of brand-building that backed the results
It’s no coincidence that Dad Dressed Me impressed nearly every influencer they reached — to the point of accumulating multiple high profile shares and tags. With months spent on back-end brand building in the year leading up to launch, the brand was strategically built to deliver an exciting experience people wanted to be part of.
“Before building the brand, I started out wanting to buy pre-made items and sell them on my website. As I started researching, it felt inauthentic to me. I thought, I can’t just sell somebody else’s product and put my label on it. This doesn’t feel right — and if I do this, I want to do it right.”
Creating a cohesive and exciting experience — and enlisting the right creatives and collaborators to lend their expertise in doing so — was always the plan for Natalie: “I was in the position where I had money behind me to invest in the business, so I thought, what are the things I need to set up a good business? I need marketing, I need copy, I need a website, I need photos. All of those things were an investment, but definitely essential to set up a good business — and create continuity through the business, like your branding, your messaging, your colours being consistent. It was also about taking time with the products, creating products you love.”
Rather than building the brand identity bit-by-bit as you grow, Natalie emphasises the importance of having a strong, recognisable brand locked-in before being seen — visually, verbally and through every aspect of the customer experience. She shares: “I would recommend getting as much done as you can before launch. There’s always going to be things you can fix along the way or make better, but spend as much time as you can in the early days to get it right.”
Unprovoked by us, Natalie shares that undergoing the Brandnote service with Lovenote was transformative in how she approaches selling through her brand: “I found the most helpful thing was doing my brand voice with Lovenote. Because you have an idea in your head about what you want to do and what this brand is, but you need to narrow that down, like: who is the customer? How do we talk? What’s the vibe we’re going with? It helped with everything.”
The effects of the competitor communication analysis, market insights and detailed brand voice development continue to this day — it’s never one-and-done. Natalie explains: “Because of the Brandnote, now I’m at the point where I could be selling kids’ clothes; I could sell a baby carrier or a kids’ cardigan. I know my brand voice, I know who my brand is — and using that brand, I could sell whatever I wanted.”
Natalie reflects on her order of operations before building the brand — starting with brand voice development early in the process, which led to the website build, then expanded into email marketing, paid ads and beyond. She explains she would “one hundred percent” recommend doing it this way: “Definitely start with brainstorming and working on your brand, then you can work on which products you want to sell from that. It starts with who you are; you can have an idea that you want to be in kids’ clothing, or whichever area it may be. But until you really brainstorm what your brand is, it’s going to be really hard to do it.”
The importance of brand continues to push the success of Dad Dressed Me: “I look at it like I’m my customer as well. Sometimes I think about things like: is it worthwhile spending $1.50 on a mailer? But that’s your brand. People talk about it. People talk about the little logos, people talk when it’s different to what other people are doing. That’s how I want the brand to be — to stand out, do something different, be something fresh.”
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Based on an interview with Natalie Field, founder of Dad Dressed Me
Written by Taryn Rapp of Lovenote
