Anthony Davis deals with dandruff. Paige Bueckers is focused on keeping her scalp healthy. Athletes…They’re just like us.
Unlike the rest of us, though, both Davis and Bueckers appeared in CeraVe’s “Head of CeraVe” campaign this year, which imagines the basketball stars as execs for the brand and incorporates dermatologists with humor. The campaign performed so well that the brand inked a league-wide deal with the NBA, becoming its official skin-care and hair-care partner as of this week, Jasteena Gill, SVP of marketing for CeraVe US, said.
“Our CeraVe fan base of users, and also the NBA fan base, were engaging so well with this campaign and were really enthused by the interaction of that combination of the NBA with the dermatologists in our campaign,” Gill told Marketing Brew. “We really took that as an impetus for us to further pursue this.”
The NBA has quickly become a high-priority partnership for the brand, and Gill said her team is focused on breaking the traditional sponsorship mold with a digital-first campaign that also seeks to educate fans about skin care and entertain them during the first season of the multiyear deal.
Audience crossover: While the partnerships with Davis and Bueckers were enough to prove that basketball-related content could lead to brand engagement, the NBA also stood out in part because of its diverse audience and wide reach, which aligned with CeraVe’s aim to target consumers across genders and racial identities, Gill said.
“Everyone has skin,” Gill said. “The NBA is engaged in creating engaging content and ensuring that they’re at the forefront of culture…We really like to ensure that we are connected with our consumers at those touchpoints of culture.”
Given the audience alignment and mutual focus on digital content, the CeraVe team intends to leverage the NBA’s platform to educate consumers about skin care, encourage them to develop skin-care routines, and, ultimately, convert them to CeraVe users, Gill said.
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Preseason: To get the ball rolling, Gill and her team spent a few days during the week prior to the official partnership announcement teasing it online. CeraVe partnered with popular basketball news parody account NBACentel to get involved with the NBA community on X, and the brand posted plenty about basketball on its own accounts on other platforms. NBACentel helped officially announce the deal, too.
Moving forward, CeraVe is set to have a presence at the NBA Cup in-season tournament that starts at the end of the month, as well as at other “key NBA moments” like All-Star Weekend throughout the season, Gill said. Her team is also planning more digital campaigns, media integrations, retail displays, and on-the-ground activations tied to the partnership, plus collaborating with NBA Cares for a philanthropic initiative providing dermatology screenings and education at Jr. NBA clinics.
Man-to-man: Player and influencer partnerships are another integral part of the sponsorship, according to Gill. The exact lineup isn’t yet finalized, but her team looks for authentic users of the brand to feature in its content, she said.
While star power can help get people excited about skin care, and the NBA certainly has plenty of it, Gill said she still intends to keep dermatologists front and center in the campaign, which is ultimately about education.
“This is not going to be your traditional sports marketing partnership,” she said. “I think this is a really unique opportunity for us to bring dermatologists to such a scaled audience, and make it fun, and make it entertaining.”
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