Billie is capitalizing on ’90s nostalgia with a little bit assist from one of many decade’s most memorable collectible figurines: Chia Pets.
The razor model is promoting its personal model of a Chia Pet on its web site. Aiming to rejoice ladies’s physique hair, Billie’s collaboration with Chia Pets depicts a lady in a scrunchie and tank high together with her arms raised to indicate her armpits. As a substitute of rising chia from her head, the figurine sprouts chia from her armpits.
“We tried to create a bodily illustration of a extra celebratory, joyful lens on ladies’s physique hair,” Catherine Wolpe, basic supervisor at Billie, advised ADWEEK.
Billie made 1,200 Chia Pets that promote for $25.99 which are accessible from August 12 till they promote out. The razor model additionally recreated the Chia Pet infomercial with a customized Billie jingle and can help the marketing campaign with out-of-home advertisements in Los Angeles and New York Metropolis.
The collaboration comes at a time when toys for adults are on the rise with the success of Pop Mart’s plush Labubu gremlins. Manufacturers like Cava and McDonald’s have taken discover and cashed in on the pattern.
Whereas Wolpe has observed the recognition of toys for adults, she sees Billie’s Chia Pet as a part of a broader curiosity in nostalgia.
“Individuals are actually craving consolation and levity greater than ever—it’s not stunning for us that concepts that lean into nostalgia are having an actual second,” stated Wolpe.
This isn’t the primary out-of-the-box, nostalgic marketing campaign from Billie, which was acquired by CPG large Edgewell Private Look after $310 million in 2021. Most just lately, the model put up scratch-and-sniff billboards in New York Metropolis to advertise its deodorant. In 2023, Billie bought No Worries If Not, a board recreation spotlighting the challenges of being a lady. And in 2022, Billie created a e book known as A Youngsters E book About Physique Hair to show youngsters about physique hair.
To measure the success of those buzzy campaigns, Billie appears at social engagement and gross sales of the limited-edition merchandise. The aim is to drive cultural dialog and spark pleasure, stated Wolpe.
“Ideally, it could assist folks rethink how outdated a few of these norms round ladies’s physique hair actually are,” stated Wolpe.
