CeraVe today (Oct. 6) has been named the official skin care and hair care partner of the NBA, per details shared with Marketing Dive. The L’Oréal-owned brand will promote the partnership, which includes experiential and digital activations, with a social-first teaser phase that’s inline with its other culture-hacking marketing efforts.
The partnership brings together the number one dermatologist-recommended skin care brand in the U.S., per survey data cited by CeraVe, and the sports league that is perhaps the most-digitally engaged in the U.S. — two “powerhouses” with diverse audiences and fans, said Jasteena Gill, vice president of marketing at CeraVe U.S.
“Something that we've prided ourselves on is that we've always been able to step outside the traditional skincare box and capture moments of culture and be at the forefront of culture,” the executive said. “The NBA is a testament to how sports can transcend the sports world and impact culture, fashion and skincare, and have so much influence on people's lifestyles.”
Along with a “Care For All” philanthropic program that offers dermatology check-ups and skin health education at Jr. NBA clinics, CeraVe will be integrated into NBA events like the Emirates NBA Cup and within video game NBA 2K. The brand has dabbled in gaming as a part of culture that resonates across demographic lines.
“It's not about coming to life in a more traditional way. It's about finding our way in and creating a world with skincare in the NBA 2K universe,” Gill said. “We're still working through what that looks like.”
To tease the tie-up, CeraVe will team up with #NBATwitter favorite @NBACentel for the parody account’s first brand partnership. CeraVe will also roll out a takeover of its own social channels with content inspired by NBA cultural moments to encourage speculation and engage with fans. The multi-stage teaser strategy has helped CeraVe amplify campaigns, as it did with its Super Bowl debut in 2024.
“We like to flip the script on how make things come to life,” Gill said. “We're going to start to activate with players and influencers, keeping this socially native.”
Fine-tuning ‘medutainment’
The tie-up grew out of CeraVe’s “Head of CeraVe” campaign that featured NBA All-Star Anthony Davis, alongside WNBA star Paige Beuckers and TikTok personality Charli D’Amelio. The goal was to bring authenticity to an effort around the brand’s anti-dandruff shampoo and conditioner with actual users of the product.
“We saw great interaction and engagement with being able to bring an NBA player and CeraVe together with a real educational insight about dandruff, and also having the dermatologist at the heart of that campaign to really bring that skincare education forward,” Gill said.
Founded in 2005 and acquired by L’Oréal in 2017, CeraVe has become a $2 billion brand by leaning on its devoted customer base. In the last few years, it has been combining skin care education and social-media-friendly entertainment into a tactic it calls “medutainment.” Previous efforts along these lines have included one of the best campaigns of Super Bowl LVIII and spoofs of both soap operas and rom-coms.
The success of CeraVe’s digital and social campaigns can be attributed to two factors, Gill explained: starting every campaign with a true consumer insights and finding ways to put actual dermatologists and educational information at the heart of the effort.
“It's about finding CeraVe in the conversations that [consumers] are organically having, and what matters to them,” Gill said. “How do we ensure that we can make that fun and engaging, and push ourselves to think about disruptive ways to bring that educational insight through our campaign?”
