by When an ad for Cetaphil lotion ran online days before the Super Bowl, it generated rave reviews for a narrative that evoked a story familiar to parents, football fans and Taylor Swift fans.
In the commercial, a father tries, unsuccessfully, to interest his teenage daughter, who is distracted by something on her phone, in a soccer game. She goes to her bedroom to complete her skin care routine and uses Cetaphil on her face. She then goes downstairs to see her father watching a soccer game while wearing a white jersey with the number 89. The announcer can be heard saying, “Well, folks, there she is, the game’s most famous fan,” drawing a smile. of the daughter
The father, sensing an opportunity, then enters his room wearing a red number 13 shirt and jokingly applies cream to his face before imploring him to come watch the game. He goes downstairs, he leaves his phone on the coffee table and snuggles up next to his father. The ad ends with them wearing their t-shirts on the couch and laughing. An on-screen message reads: “This season, dads and daughters found a new way to connect.”
While it doesn’t directly mention Taylor Swift, the ad is a nod to how the music superstar’s relationship with Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce is said to have led to more fathers and daughters watching NFL games together. this season. The T-shirts with the numbers 13 and 89 were implicit references to Swift’s “lucky number,” 13, and her (and Kelce’s) birth year, 1989. And the father in the ad was wearing friendship bracelets, as are many of Ms. Swift’s fans.
Social media users reacted positively to the announcement, making connections to their own lives. A TikTok user who posted the ad saying “It has me crying.” In X, fan accounts for Mrs. Swift praised the commercial and a user saying“as the daughter of a soccer coach and a die-hard Swiftie, I love this.”
But on Friday night, a woman who runs a popular TikTok account, Sharon Mbabazi, said the company had stolen her idea for the ad. On her social media accounts, she shared a TikTok post from September in which she is putting on her makeup when her stepfather walks in and tells her about Kelce’s increase in Instagram followers, t-shirt sales, and popularity since his relationship with Swift. it became public. .
The post, whose caption reads, “My stepdad has been updating me about Taylor and Travis every day since Sunday,” had 2.7 million views as of Sunday afternoon. (It’s one of several he’s posted about her, football, and her stepfather.) He joins Mrs. Mbabazi in applying lotion to her face, while giving updates on Kansas City’s performance or simply telling her when the Chiefs are playing, and getting ready to watch the game together. Mbabazi did not respond to a request for comment.
In a statement on Sunday, Cetaphil said the ad was “an original creation” that was “inspired by a unique trend this year in which numerous young women and girls have bonded with their parents through football and posted about this on their social channels. ” The company added that, after speaking with Mbabazi, it was “working with Sharon and other influencers like her,” although it did not specify what that meant.
Other health and beauty companies, which often focus on women in their marketing, perhaps hoping to benefit from the interest in Mrs. Swift, announced during the Super Bowl on Sunday night, including ELF cosmetics, NYX Makeup and Dove. (Cetaphil’s ad was not scheduled to air nationally during the game.)
Mary Scott, a professor of strategic communications at Montclair State University, said Super Bowl ads were most effective when they captured a feeling or moment that the country as a whole had recently experienced. Even more than the Swift effect, Scott said, the depiction of phones as a barrier between parents and children is something many parents could relate to.
He compared Cetaphil’s commercial to those from the 2021 Super Bowl that alluded to Americans’ shared experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“They’ve come to a different reality,” Scott said, referring to the Cetaphil announcement. “They just went deeper.”
