Dr. Squatch, the men’s personal care brand based in Los Angeles, is lighting up its digital and streaming advertising with a new campaign featuring LA Chargers’ QB Justin Herbert.
The DTC brand launched the campaign in early September with plans to run spots on digital platforms throughout the 2022 NFL season. The brand turned to CTV after NFL ads there performed better during football games, as proven by EDO data.
Herbert is the brand’s first NFL pro endorser, and his authentic celebrity appearance has already produced early success for the campaign. In fact, EDO captured two airings from Dr. Squatch in the Thursday Night Football on Prime Video debut matchup — its first of the 2022 NFL season. Its first spot, which aired just after kickoff at 8:23pm ET, was the third most engaging of the night with 83K searches. The encore airing of the same ad, which ran about 10 minutes later, generated 35K searches.
For more on why the Dr. Squatch campaign is hitting with NFL viewers, and how we can expect it to continue performing throughout the season, EDO’s head of media partnerships Scott Grunther shares three core thoughts.
- Authenticity rules. Dr. Squatch’s new spot with Justin Herbert underscores the importance of authentic celebrity appearances in advertising. Time and again, EDO has found that these types of authentic partnerships generate superior performance results than a typical ad airing without a celebrity appearance. The brand’s most recent airings during Thursday Night Football prove this, as they were the highest performing ads Dr. Squatch has aired in or outside of NFL programming all year.
- Context matters. EDO has historically shown that ads featuring an NFL star perform better when aired during NFL games. Relevancy is a key driver of ad effectiveness, and NFL fans are going to be more engaged with ads that feature NFL players. While EDO hasn’t yet captured any linear TV airings for the Justin Herbert campaign, we anticipate that the best time for its linear debut would be in NFL programming. It may perform even better if it were to air during games in which the Chargers are playing, as Chargers fans may be well primed to search online for Dr. Squatch after seeing their star QB in a spot.
- A streaming-heavy TV strategy. Again, EDO data shows that Dr. Squatch has only run linear TV ads during February and May this year, amounting to just under 200 total airings. The DTC brand has shown a concerted focus around advertising on sports networks such as ESPN, NFL TV, and NBA TV. The NFL presented the perfect opportunity for Dr. Squatch to once again reenter the TV playing field – especially as the contextual environment of programming typically provides a boost to ad performance, as we saw with its spot that aired during the Herbert-led Chargers game on Prime Video.
Want more NFL ad insights? Check out EDO’s public ranking of top NFL ads, updated weekly.