How Bissell is turning its viral TikTok product into an influencer campaign

Bissell has become a mainstay of #cleantok, with its Little Green Machine spot cleaner going viral on the platform. That wave of organic content around the portable deep cleaner, has led Bissell to launch its first-ever influencer campaign on TikTok, tapping six influencers to highlight the Little Green Machine. 

The videos typically show anything from the mess created by a child's craft project to that of pet-owners, with the Bissell cleaner starring as the hero of the videos, restoring a rug to near new or gratifyingly removing dirt from a carpet. The videos are receiving comments from the influencers' followers on what they want to see cleaned next. 

Bissell’s Little Green portable carpet cleaner started showing up in TikToks in the spring of 2020. At the time, Bissell didn’t even have a TikTok account. Now, the hashtag #LittleGreenMachine has over 72 million views. With consumers feeling the pinch of inflation and cutting back on cleaning services or holding off on buying new, the brand is hoping to show them how their deep cleaners can “refresh and revive” their current furniture or rugs. 

“There are more people at home, so that naturally leads to more messes,” said Meighan McLaughlin, associate director of global commercial for the portable deep clean category at Bissell. “A lot of them adopted pets, or had a baby, or are spending more time on the couch, but all this on tighter budgets. So there’s a decline in pro-cleaning services, but we saw an uptick in reviving rugs, furniture, and cars. How do I get more out of less?”

Sales of Little Green machines have tripled in the last two years, according to McLaughlin. This success of the Little Green has led to a few "lean inventory months," McLaughlin added, something other brands have experiences when they go viral on TikTok. Bissell also saw sales of other spot cleaners increase, such as those that focus on pets.

Watching customers make videos of themselves using the Little Green Machine presented a natural pool of influencers, and made Bissell rethink how it showed off products in videos.

“We have taken cues from them on new messes to clean, like car detailing and furniture flips, as well as the pacing of filming those super satisfying clean paths,” said Emily Mesecar, social media and content manager for Bissell. Those “clean path” shots have helped skyrocket some videos to over 17 million views.

The cleaner often appears with the hashtags #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt and #CleanTok, which Bissell follows closely for trends. It also helps them target a particular audience.

"People love transformations, and in a sense, CleanTok is a super condensed and simplified version of transformation,” Taryn Crouthers, chief operating officer at production studio Attn:, and the head of Attn:'s TikTok Studio, which has made content for Clorox, said in an email. “It provides instant gratification, it also hits ASMR buttons, and there is a learning component.”