If you’ve never heard of Supergoop!, you might think it’s the latest offshoot from Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle company, Goop. But you’d be wrong.
Supergoop! is a sunscreen brand founded in 2007 by Holly Thaggard, a former teacher and harpist who started the company after a friend’s skin cancer diagnosis. Amanda Baldwin, CEO of Supergoop!, told Marketing Brew that its quirky name comes from Thaggard herself, who used to refer to her sunscreen samples as “goop” when creating her first formula.
“She had her friends and her family try her goop, and she’d tell them, ‘This goop issuper.’ And that gave it a name. And by the way, this is all before Gwyneth Paltrow had a brand, for whatever that's worth,” Baldwin said.
Nearly 15 years later, Supergoop! is a multimillion-dollar SPF maker with several products sold on its site and in retailers like Sephora. Now, it’s dipping its toes in the marketing water with its first multichannel campaign, which debuted this week.
The campaign spans platforms from Pinterest and TikTok to connected TV (CTV) and YouTube. It’s the brand’s first test of CTV.
“I'm very excited about CTV because I feel like we have the capacity to do it and we also have the [type of] content that I think will perform really well there,” Baldwin said, explaining that she thinks of CTV as a new frontier that lets brands that can’t necessarily spring for a Super Bowl ad get in front of a large audience. “If you're able to buy video and TV in a digital format, it kind of opens up a whole new world.”
The campaign itself, which lightheartedly spoofs morning TV shows, reminds viewers to start the day with SPF. It features celebs such as tennis player Maria Sharapova and NFL star Emmanuel Sanders.
Why now?
Last year, the pandemic locked down would-be beach goers (and, ostensibly, their yearly sunscreen pit stops). Even so, the past year was, oddly enough, very good for the sunscreen brand.
Baldwin shared that sales were “very much” up over the past year vs. the same time period pre-pandemic, but didn’t get into specifics. Luckily for Supergoop!, she explained, the sun isn't a movie theater or a restaurant—it stays open 24/7, even during 2020.
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“We weren't talking as much about going on vacation last summer as we were having a great time in your backyard,” said Baldwin, who noted that once Supergoop! figured out how to create content without photo shoots and tailor it to meet consumers where they were at the time, sales took off. Its DTC business more than doubled between 2019 and 2020, per Retail Brew.
It isn’t the only sunscreen brand that experienced a 2020 boost. In November, Bloomberg reported that Banana Boat sunscreen’s parent company, Edgewell Personal Care, benefited from what Chief Financial Officer Daniel Sullivan called “extended sun-care season,” as Covid-19 kept people outdoors.
Beach picture
We couldn’t help but wonder…if Supergoop! funneled money from its pandemic-induced revenue increase into its biggest marketing campaign yet, will other DTC categories that had a good pandemic, like sweatpants and cookware, do the same?
Aja Singer, a brand and creative strategy consultant who writes a newsletter about DTC trends, told Marketing Brew that this could “definitely” be a trend. She said DTC brands are looking to diversify their advertising channels since Facebook and Instagram are “expensive and oversaturated” right now.
“Another reason this type of advertising is desirable for DTC brands is the credibility that TV…give[s] them, along with access to an entirely new demographic that may not be active on digital channels where their ads normally live,” Singer continued.
Sharma Brands founder Nik Sharma (whose Twitter bio literally says “The DTC Guy”) is closer to the “No” camp. “I’m sure some of them are focused on brand awareness,” he said, explaining that he wouldn’t be surprised if other DTCs follow in Supergoop!’s footsteps. “But some other smart brands are already focused on taking the profits and putting them into new product lines, which you can also find in their trademarks (hint: Caraway).”