Regional Super Bowl ads for DTC brands—how Hero Cosmetics built awareness with its spot

Hero Cosmetics, the maker of Mighty Patch pimple patches, has had a pretty eventful 24 hours, from running its first Super Bowl ad in local markets to announcing influencer Alix Earle as the first global face of the brand. The 30-second “Pop Me” Super Bowl spot personifies a pimple being eviscerated by the brand’s Mighty Patch, even as the pimple pleas to be popped rather than removed with a patch. The slogan “Don’t pop it, patch it” is heard in the background as a woman in a red pimple costume screams while meeting her pimple patch fate. While the “Pop Me” spot was regional, the move still seemed significant—Super Bowl TV advertising isn’t exactly the norm for most DTC brands. The ad ran during the game on CBS in New York and Minneapolis, as well as on Paramount+. Hero worked with the creative agency Humanaut on the spot. Also read: How DTC brands marketed around the Super Bowl Founded in 2017 by Ju Rhyu after she tried acne-fighting hydrocolloid skin patches on a trip to Korea, Hero Cosmetics launched with one product on Amazon: The Mighty Patch pimple patch, a hydrocolloid skin patch similar to the ones sold by Starface. The best and worst Super Bowl ads Ad Age reviews the Big Game commercials Click here While the brand started as an e-commerce-only company with that one product, it now sells skincare solutions from eye cream to sunscreen at retailers including Target and CVS. In 2022, Hero was acquired by consumer packaged goods giant Church & Dwight for $630 million. Below, more on how Rhyu and Church & Dwight made the decision to run a regional Super Bowl ad—and how it came together behind the scenes. This interview has been lightly edited for content and clarity. What made Hero decide to run a regional ad in the Super Bowl? We are always experimenting and in 2023 started focusing more on above-the-line marketing and brand awareness. It was all very opportunistic because we had extra budget and good pricing for two of our top markets. Our digital marketing manager, Julia Sculley, thought it would be a good idea to push our ad onto a bigger stage in a very focused way to test the effectiveness of running an ad during the greatest marketing stage there is. How did you decide which creative to run? We picked our “Pop Me” ad because we felt like it was the one that told the brand story the best—showing the annoying zit that you’re tempted to pop but then gets covered by the Mighty Patch. What made Hero decide to run an existing ad rather than create a new one for the Super Bowl? The ad ran on connected TV starting in the second quarter of 2023. We knew we already had winning creative and this was our opportunity to showcase it on a bigger stage. It was more efficient for us to run something that we knew was a great ad than start from scratch and recreate the wheel. What inspired the story in the ad? In this “Pimple, Meet Your Mighty Patch” series we have three spots covering various moments in peoples’ lives where the unfortunate pimple comes up. They are “Zitcation,” “Pop Me” and “Date.” We thought it’d be fun to personify the pimple and show how the Mighty Patch can knock them out. The results and engagement have been off the charts. Obviously, it’s early, but what has the response been like to the ad thus far? We don’t have the results yet but we did see a spike on Amazon during the spot, which is super exciting. Anecdotally, I personally got tons of texts and messages from friends who saw the ad. I know the rest of the team also received a lot of messages saying they saw the ad. The eyeballs are there, for sure. How did the team decide that now was the time to experiment with a Super Bowl ad? It was our first-ever TV ad during the Super Bowl. We started doing more brand awareness in 2023 and it is a continued goal to increase overall awareness of Hero in 2024. We had extra budget towards the end of 2023 and … Sculley had the brilliant idea to try some focused buys during Super Bowl to show our ad on a bigger level outside our main target audiences and in the two key markets where we have strong sales—New York and Minneapolis. What are your thoughts on DTC brands running Super Bowl ads in general? It depends on where the brand is in its lifecycle and what the marketing goals are. During the DTC boom, there was probably too much money spent on awareness that didn’t perform or convert. Hero only started spending on awareness in year six of the brand and we had our first focused Super Bowl ad in year seven. It made sense for us because the awareness building is a key priority and we now have national distribution. There is a time and place for it. For us, that time is now. Subscribe to Ad Age Sign up now for the latest industry news and analysis Click here

Regional Super Bowl ads for DTC brands—how Hero Cosmetics built awareness with its spot

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