For years, Icy Hot’s promoting has focused on the functionality of the therapy that it delivers via patches, balms and sprays. Usually, those efforts have been led by pro athletes at the highest of their game, including a dramatic 2022 spot that sang a song of fireplace and ice.
The Sanofi brand is changing things up in a brand new campaign, “The Comeback Cavalry,” that went live through the semifinals of Unrivaled, the ladies’s three-on-three basketball league that launched this 12 months, on TNT on March 16. The first work for the brand by The Martin Agency creates a world contained in the product itself and taps Shaquille O’Neal to lead the charge for on a regular basis athletes — not only elite ones.
“We’re at all times trying to look for methods to stay relevant and proceed to evolve with our consumer, so being more culture-first and more in-the-everyday is a technique for us to do this,” said Vince Balagat, senior brand lead for Icy Hot.
A 30-second spot directed by Keith Schofield begins during a rec league game of three-on-three basketball. When a player reaches for Icy Hot to soothe his sore back, the motion zooms into the bottle, where O’Neal rallies dozens of Comeback Cavalry members, outfitted in red and blue outfits and prepared with coolers of ice and even a flamethrower.
“We’ve used these hot warriors and cold warriors to bring that conceptual science to life in a way that hopefully consumers can understand higher how the product works, however it’s also fun and entertaining and may tell our story in a more impactful way,” Balagat said.
Back to the longer term
The campaign will appear across TV, online video, streaming video, social, radio, digital display and digital out-of-home. Along with the comedic tone and immersive creative, the campaign introduces a brand new tagline, “You’re So Back,” that riffs on the viral phrase “We’re so back” to extend the cultural play.
“[The tagline] is tapping right into a cultural thing, however it also seems like it could continue to exist its own,” said Graham Davis, creative director at The Martin Agency, who noted it also helps juxtapose the high stakes of the Comeback Cavalry with the low stakes faced by regular athletes. “‘You’re so back’ seems like an enormous thing to say, and it’s almost like a rallying cry: ‘Get back on the market, you are awesome.’ But it’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m so back from being sore from the gym yesterday.’”
The campaign creative was born from Icy Hot looking to solve for 2 different business challenges: making a well-known brand name (that doubles as a product differentiator) more meaningful and memorable, and appealing to a wider audience. To help meet those goals, the brand and agency refreshed the role of longtime brand ambassador O’Neal, who’s greater than a decade removed from his playing profession and is healthier known lately as a TV commentator and reliable spokesperson for a wide range of brands.
“We are evolving his role to almost be like a pacesetter, coach or cheerleader of the cavalry, which seems to mirror how his place in the broader culture is evolving,” Balagat said.
Professional athletes will stay play a job in the campaign, if in a special capability. Icy Hot’s branding has had a presence during Unrivaled’s season, and league co-founder and star Napheesa Collier serves as an envoy for Icy Hot, demonstrating how the broad-reach campaign is bringing together marketing channels.
“We’ve already built a little bit of an activation around Unrivaled, so there is not any higher place to air our recent spot than in front of audiences who’ve been seeing Icy Hot for the previous couple of months,” Balagat said.
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