head & shoulders Hair Endurance for Men
Creating a Pop Culture Icon to Build Brand Loyalty
Challenge
- Create awareness of head & shoulders’ new product – Hair Endurance for Men
Insight
- Target is “guy’s guys,” who don’t obsess over their appearance. We must engage them on their terms
Strategies
- Using brand spokesperson, Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu at kickoff of 2010 NFL season, MMC launched an all-out effort to engage target men to have fun talking about something they don’t often share: how to get fuller, thicker hair
- Making Troy’s hair the star, we offered consumers access to a “world” (on TroysHair.com) where guys can explore such manly topics as who has the most iconic hair in NFL history and how they might “Polamalocize” their own head
- Media Initiatives:
- Announcement of a $1 million insurance policy on Troy’s hair
- A “Mane Event” search for the NFL legend with the most iconic hair of all-time
- Integrations with popular male destinations, “Mike & Mike” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live”
Success
- 624 million media impressions (to date), 295 million in the first 24 hours
- $1 million insurance policy ran on the front page of ESPN.com, NBCSports.com, People.com and Yahoo.com
- On launch day, “Troy Polamalu” was the #1 Hot Search term on Google Trends and on the top list of Google, Yahoo and Bing
- The AP image from Troy’s ad shoot was the most-emailed photo on Yahoo over two days
- Global coverage included media stories in Canada, England, Ireland, France, Australia and Japan

