Last March, during the Santiago Challenger tournament in Chile, tennis player Andrea Collarini made a strange gesture: before serving, he sprayed the tennis balls with spray. What could simply have been attributed to a strange athlete’s mania, turned out to be an advertising campaign by Dove Men+Care to promote its All Body Deo deodorant.
The brand, which is a title sponsor and has sponsored the competition since 2021, chose the meeting to launch its product in the country, suitable for all parts of the body. To do this, it had a strategy devised by VML Argentina, previously responsible for communicating the arrival of All Body Deo in Argentina with an outdoor advertising campaign that “hacked” the billboards of other brands.
Some even questioned the legality of the action and how it could influence the game.
In this case, the agency’s proposal involved the generation of expectation and social conversation, as well as the participation of Collarini. The athlete was in charge of creating the trigger to awaken the curiosity of the assistants: when an assistant gave him the balls to perform a serve during a match, he sprayed them with a spray.
The act was picked up by some users on social networks, who wondered about the nature and motivation of the gesture. In response to those who shared the video fragment, some even questioned the legality of the action and how it could influence the game.
In collaborations with sports media, the brand also amplified Andrea Collarini’s attitude during the tournament, trying to drive the conversation.
Just a few hours later, the tennis player himself revealed that it was a marketing action by Dove in which he served as an ambassador. The brand published an audiovisual piece in which Andrea Collarini explained that the fact of having sprayed the balls with spray was a parallel to the application of deodorant on different parts of the body.
In addition, the brand also took advantage of its presence at the tournament to present exclusive packaging focused on tennis, with a design that emulated the packaging in which tennis balls are usually presented.
The strategy has combined the particularities of the product and its innovative nature with the exploration of a new tone of humor for the brand, as well as its positioning in sports. “To launch this new category aimed at men, it seemed essential to us to appeal to humor and ingenuity as a resource.“, commented Rosario Ahumada, Senior Brand Manager of Dove Men +Care Chile, according to LatinSpots. “On the other hand, our association with the world of tennis is increasingly stronger and is backed by our history promoting the Dove Men +Care Challenger for several years.”.
Likewise, the agency pointed out that the campaign has tried to explore the connections between media and channels. “Sport is always a spectacular connector between brands and people, which is why we always seek to generate communication opportunities like this one.“; stated Daro Gonzalez and Rafa Quijano, Creative Directors at VML Argentina. “Not everything has to start on social networks to be social first. Any medium, space and format can trigger a conversation on networks when approached with the correct focus”.
The campaign also included experiential activations during the tournament, beyond the presence of the logo on different supports and touch points. Photocall, product raffle, games or presence of influencers and content creators accompanied the launch of the product in Chile.
