While Super Bowl LIX was a winner for women-focused ads by Nike, the NFL and Dove, the big game was missing the “creative freshness and epic fun” that audiences and the ad industry have come to expect. In another sea of celebrity-powered spots, there was nothing resembling CeraVe’s wonderfully weird Super Bowl debut from 2024 — an award winner that informed the latest campaign from the L’Oréal skincare brand.

“We learned a lot of lessons coming out of ‘Michael CeraVe,’ and obviously it’s an extremely hard campaign to follow up on. We didn’t want to do what was expected,” said Kelly Buchanan Spillers, global head of digital and social for CeraVe.

Instead of returning to the Super Bowl with a national broadcast commercial, CeraVe’s campaign for its new Anti-Dandruff Shampoo and Conditioner, “Head of CeraVe,” began around the big game, utilizing a similar social- and influencer-led strategy to the one that helped “Michael CeraVe” garner an earned-media bonanza before the final ad even aired.

“There was so much to learn from ‘Michael CeraVe’ – it rewrote the marketing playbook. One of the biggest lessons is the power of speculation or a head-scratching moment (no pun intended), the joy of a ride-along… of having an immersive, unfolding brand story,” said Samira Ansari, chief creative officer at Ogilvy New York, over email.

“Head of CeraVe” was created, produced and executed by WPP Onefluence, led by Ogilvy PR. The campaign will culminate with an ad on Feb. 14 during the “Saturday Night Live” 50th anniversary concert on Peacock, helping the brand tie into another cultural moment in a landscape starved for four-quadrant media plays.

“The different levels of demographics that we’re actually able to capture with partnering with ‘SNL’ and their talent, as well as all of our sports folks that are involved in our campaign, allow us to almost hit all of our demographics from a 360-degree perspective, both online and on linear TV,” Buchanan Spillers said.

Stars building buzz

Video content intended to generate organic buzz around the campaign featuring TikTok personality Charli D’Amelio and NBA player Anthony Davis began rolling out last week. Finding top influencers who actually could use CeraVe’s new product was easier than expected.

“You can imagine what the casting agents said to us when we said, ‘We want to only feature people that have authentic scalp issues or dandruff in our campaign. Please help us find someone that is willing to talk about their dandruff,’” Buchanan Spillers said.

Davis — the perennial All-Star who was recently (and shockingly) traded to the Dallas Mavericks earlier this month — was a natural fit for the brand, in both his playful attitude and in his ability to put the brand in front of a new audience. D’Amelio has been featured in several CeraVe campaigns and is currently appearing in Broadway musical “& Juliet,” a gig with a wig that creates the “perfect environment” for an itchy scalp.

@charlidamelio my pre-show routine ☕️????????‍♀️????#CeraVePartner @CeraVe ♬ original sound - charli d’amelio

The effort also includes University of Connecticut basketball player — and likely #1 pick in the upcoming WNBA draft — Paige Bueckers. Bueckers was featured in a CeraVe campaign around acne products last summer and provides a way to speak about the brand’s therapeutic line that replenishes its namesake ceramides in the scalp for consumers without dandruff.

“We look for people that are already using our products and talking about us before we even reach out. It was really easy for us to scout these folks, find them and even suggest them to our talent team, because we found them posting about us first,” Buchanan Spillers said. “It makes it very easy to build a relationship from there.”

Campaign content was tailored to each influencer, with D’Amelio’s videos showing a CeraVe shrine in the style of videos on TikTok, the platform where she has the second-most followed account. Davis appears in content modeled after post-game interviews and contract-signing press conferences, while Bueckers’ video follows the conventions of sports documentaries — including a hair-stimulating helmet that nods to the LED therapy mask trend (sadly for Bueckers, the mask is just a prop).

A headbanger’s ball

“Head of CeraVe” was crafted with an all-encompassing channel mix in mind, with unique content and partnerships across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and linear TV. Select retailers will also tie-up with the campaign after launch. The humorous video content allows CeraVe to continue producing “medutainment” that seeks to address medical taboos in entertaining ways.

“I think one of the joys of creativity today is that you can get after a brand moment in so many different ways. And they don’t all have to fit in one perfect conceptual box,” Ansari said. “As long as you’re true to the brand and its product or service, that you work from a place of credibility, there are so many ways you can lean into storytelling and engagement.”

The pièce de résistance for “Head of CeraVe” is a 60-second ad that will air throughout the “SNL” 50th anniversary celebration featuring stars Bowen Yang and Sarah Sherman as members of heavy metal power trio Naumôre Dandruf, alongside real-life dermatologist Dr. Dustin Portela.

The musical, rhyme-heavy spot demystifies CeraVe’s new product and its ability to handle “druff stuff” that shakes loose during the band’s headbanging (thankfully, the “dandruff” was actually broken potato chips). The spot was created alongside Yang, Sherman, “SNL” regulars Please Don’t Destroy and director Mike Diva and lands somewhere between “This is Spinal Tap” and “Wayne’s World.”

“We want to break the taboos of talking about dandruff, but how do we do this in a way that’s both ‘SNL’ and CeraVe?” Buchanan Spillers said. “We briefed them on all of the things that we wanted to get across and the tone we wanted to hit, and what’s better than an audio mnemonic: a heavy metal song.”