To capitalize on a spike in sales of its cleansers during the back-to-school shopping period, CeraVe launched its first-ever mobile tour this summer designed to engage students preparing to return to schools and campuses. The four-city CeraVe Drama Free Cleansing Tour hit New York City, Chicago, Nashville and Atlanta, Aug. 1-17, and offered a soap opera theme that tied into the brand’s larger #CleanseLikeADerm campaign.
The brand recently released videos inspired by the daytime TV staple to educate consumers on the importance of proper skincare routines and debunk common cleansing misconceptions. Starring actress Xochitl Gomez and TikTok influencer and dermatologist Dr. Dustin Portela, the drama-filled spots featured bar soap and a fake dermatologist as the villains.
Carrying the Hollywood theme, the fully branded 32-foot stage tour trailer included marquee signage, life-size movie posters, screens playing the campaign videos and a “Soap POPera” game where attendees “popped” bubbles to win prizes. Testing their reaction times, players had a minute to hit as many bubble buttons as possible as they lit up on one of the trailer’s walls. Of course, photo ops were in the mix, such as a couch in front of a bubble wall for dramatic posing, and in a green screen photo booth, attendees could create videos using elements from CeraVe’s soap opera campaign film.
The main event on tour was inside the trailer. While waiting to get in (and lines were long, sometimes hundreds of people deep), attendees scanned a QR code that led to a data-capture form and a quiz of a few questions that matched them to the best CeraVe cleanser for their skin type and skin concerns. Inside, participants stepped over to a functional sink to try out the cleanser products for themselves and examine the results in a hanging wide mirror. Natural light coming in from the trailer’s window walls and rows of lightbulbs overhead illuminated the blue and green space and spotlighted the cleansers on display shelves and on rectangular platforms. Attendees could then speak with board-certified dermatologists to get cleansing tips and skincare insights.
Additional outdoor touchpoints included a giant CeraVe Hydrating Facial Cleanser bottle that dispensed bubbles and an interactive station highlighting the three essential ceramides to help maintain the protective skin barrier, where participants picked a key and unlocked one of three bubble doors to come away with a prize (“Unlock the key to your skin”). Samples and swag were also hot on the tour, with attendees clinging to CeraVe Hydrating Facial Cleanser keychains and limited drops of the Intensive Moisturizing Lotion.
The tour grew out of last year’s first-ever consumer pop-up for the brand, the CeraVe Cleanser Playland, in New York City, where CeraVe is based. The one-day-only event invited locals and tourists to learn about dermatologist-approved cleansing habits and its products through lab demonstrations with L’Oréal scientists and larger-than-life skin-stallations. While CeraVe gathered a lot of engagement from the 2023 pop-up, the team saw an opportunity for expansion to reach even more consumers in new markets, and thus, the idea for the East Coast tour was born.
“People usually come in, and they just want the Instagram picture and the free product and then get out of there. But I think what sets this experience apart and what we do well is we really revolve everything around the dermatologists,” says Neil Gustafson, avp-marketing at CeraVe. “It’s in our brand name, CeraVe, developed with dermatologists, so why wouldn’t we bring a dermatologist to chat one-on-one? And I think for us, it’s really about spreading awareness of good skincare habits and also using that opportunity to get someone to interact and ask questions.”
The first three stops on the tour clocked 3,000 attendees and 10,200 overall engagements. Xochitl Gomez made an appearance at the Hudson Yards activation to capture content that she and the brand have shared on social. Plus, the brand brought in popular, social media-savvy dermatologists, like Dr. Portela, who has 2.4 million followers on TikTok, as well as local dermatologists with smaller followings, like Dr. May Hall (Dr.WrinkleStopper), with almost 4,000 followers on Instagram. (We came across her TikTok video exploring the Nashville tour stop, which has 6.1 million views.) Out-of-home advertising also boosted the events in each city, such as a giant billboard outside of the Javits Center in NYC and ads in Grand Central Station, Penn Station and Hudson Yards.
“We always try to strike the balance of education and entertainment, so this idea of edutainment is important, especially when you amplify these types of experiences online,” Gustafson says. “People know they’re being advertised to at the end of the day, but if you can do it in an authentic and entertaining way, while also providing that derm education, then it’s really the best of both worlds for us.” Agencies: Youth Marketing Connection; Lime Media; Coyne PR.
More Scenes From the Tour:
Photo credits: Diane Bondareff/AP Content Services for CeraVe; Lime Media
