• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, Yesterday

Culture is the dominant theme in marketing for now. Drafting off of, plugging into, photobombing pop culture trends and social memes has become a hedge against the white noise of media clutter. As with all marketing trends, this smart move casts off a lot of social crapvertising and gratuitous meme surfing that drips inauthenticity. So DOVE men’s care’s recent campaign caught my eye as a way to do culture adjacent work in a way that actually speaks to the brand. Unilever plugged into an unlikely social media trend -  men posting images of their dirty sneakers and complaining about the challenge of cleaning dirty rubber.

Well it turns out that the Men+Care Body and Face Cleansing Bar cleans your kicks as well as your face.

Working with their creative agency Ogilvy and a noted content creator, they built their own counter-meme which was just as unlikey as the original – washing sneakers.  

I won’t step on the story any more than that and let our guest today Sarah McLaren, Unilever’s Head of Body Cleansing Marketing Performance and Operations, US pick up the tale.