Sports and football still work too, just on a smaller scale. Dr. Squatch has worked with Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert the past two years and ran a spot on Amazon Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football” in 2022.
But social media is the mainstay for Dr. Squatch, which has the largest social following of any brand in men’s grooming, according to Ludeke, and that’s a group that includes some very big names.
The entertainment value of Dr. Squatch content and strong work from its performance marketing team have helped the brand grow its TikTok following 250% in two years, almost all organically, Ludeke said.
The brand has its roots in natural ingredients, including its original cold-pressed soaps, and all of its scents are named after real things. That’s a contrast with a lot of products that have scents such as “sport,” though no one knows what sport is supposed to smell like.
“A lot of the scents that have historically been used in personal care don’t really mean anything,” Ludeke said. “If you say something smells like an ingredient, then there’s an expectation that it really smells like that. If I tell you it smells like sport, then I don’t necessarily have to do a good job of creating natural scent.”
Dr. Squatch instead tries to find great natural fragrances based on natural ingredients, he said. “It’s a little more work I think from our product team.”