Actress Tracee Ellis Ross launched her haircare model Sample simply shy of six years in the past with the intention of constructing merchandise designed to be layered and combined collectively with out flaking or pilling, a styling ritual often known as cocktailing. This observe is on the middle of the model’s first industrial.
The 60-second spot sees Ellis Ross because the “Chief CURLtender” serving up haircare cocktails to her castmates from Girlfriends. It was directed by youngster, and produced with ATTN, De La Revolución, and Prettybird.
The TV industrial breaks away from Sample’s digital-first method. It can run throughout streaming platforms together with Roku, Hulu, Disney+, and Paramount+. The marketing campaign additionally contains paid and natural social media with clips of the industrial, behind-the-scenes movies, and interviews.
The marketing campaign seems on Sample’s ecommerce website with a touchdown web page the place every kind of product is assigned a cocktail nickname. For instance, warmth instruments are branded as garnishes.
Turning hair merchandise into cocktails
The industrial revolves across the play on phrases of the haircare observe of cocktailing with Ellis Ross performing as a bartender for hair. The time period was the kernel that led to the narrative of the advert. The varied cocktails ordered all through the industrial spotlight completely different Sample merchandise.
“We needed to discover a option to merge the world of hair care, hair care as self care, cocktailing, and comedy,” Ellis Ross instructed ADWEEK.
The forged of Girlfriends helped carry comedy to the advert. The thought to incorporate them got here to Ellis Ross in mattress, and it wasn’t till they had been on set that she realized this 12 months marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the sequence.
Making a industrial and dealing with a director was a unique expertise than the pictures Sample has labored with for previous campaigns. It was necessary that the director had an genuine ardour and understanding of the textured hair group, and Ellis Ross discovered that in youngster, the director.
“Once you’re doing a model marketing campaign, often you’re telling a narrative via nonetheless imagery, and also you don’t essentially want the complete breadth of the story,” mentioned Ellis Ross. “However this is without doubt one of the locations the place I, from my different life as an actress and producer, have a number of expertise.”
The industrial coincides with Ellis Ross’ forthcoming solo journey present, known as Tracee Travels, on Roku. A shoppable model of the advert will run in the course of the airing of the present.
“One of many causes I did the present on Roku is they provide know-how the place you possibly can really purchase merchandise along with your distant management and cocktailing throughout the present,” mentioned Ellis Ross.
Making merchandise into huge launches
The marketing campaign’s purpose is to assist transition Sample from a startup to a legacy model and promote the breadth of the model’s merchandise, mentioned Ellis Ross. Client analysis from focus teams, social media, and different knowledge revealed that Sample has the chance to extend consciousness with the textured hair group.
Based on Sample, retail gross sales are up 25% year-to-date in comparison with final 12 months, making now an opportune time to run its first marketing campaign.
Ellis Ross mentioned that she doesn’t need Sample to depend on launching new merchandise for progress and model consciousness. As a substitute, she goals to familiarize customers with current merchandise in a method known as “launchification,” positioning merchandise as new with full-scale advertising and marketing campaigns. For instance, a marketing campaign about Sample’s curl gel therapy grew DTC gross sales by 200%.
“That concept on a bigger scale is absolutely what knowledgeable the industrial,” mentioned Ellis Ross. “If that’s engaged on a one-product technique, then we are able to try this in a bigger method that basically represents the entire full model and narrative of the model.”
