In this case, it’s not what we said, but how we delivered it that really mattered. Our messages were all variations on a simple thought – “You love CeraVe. Spread the love with your friends.” The tone was honest and low-key, reflecting friendspeak, not brandspeak. When we brought in three CeraVe-loving YouTube vloggers to share the message with their friends – in this case their millions of followers -- we made sure the spirit of honesty and friendliness continued to shine through in their videos. Coming across as too sales-y or shill-y would have jeopardized both their credibility and ours.

Channel/media strategy was explicitly targeted and rolled out to maximize impact during three waves of activity on three platforms.

Facebook: Where we had a strong following and could reach users/fans.

• Sponsored posts targeted users and qualified leads (10 million total)

• Retargeted posts encouraged participation from program-engaged

• Promotion of vlogger videos extended reach

YouTube: The platform of choice for our influencers. To drive additional traffic, videos were promoted with YouTube’s TrueView media support

• In-stream videos played before/during other videos

• Videos accompanied by clickable banner driving to sample site

Twitter: Used to host brand and retweet vlogger posts to extend engagement.

All branded/vlogger content was also posted/shared/retweeted on CeraVe’s Facebook page, Twitter Feed and YouTube channel.

We broke the Internet. Sort of. CeraVe’s sample site was so inundated we temporarily ran out. Nonetheless:

Over 400,000 samples were requested and delivered.

90,000 coupons were downloaded.

Even after the promotion was over, vlogger views kept rising…to over 2 million. And engagement scores surpassed all YouTube benchmarks.

Most importantly, CeraVe doubled their number of new users vs. a year ago. Doubled!

And that little skincare brand no one had heard of?

Well let’s just say, the word is spreading.