Charli XCX and full-body deodorant have something in common: Both have had an explosive 2024. What’s more, there’s a connection in that Charli’s tour, with Australian pop star Troye Sivan, was dubbed the “Sweat” tour.
The tour’s Los Angeles dates at the Kia Forum, on October 15 and 16, happened to align with Dove’s latest launch — the brand’s Whole Body Aluminum Free Invisible Deodorant Spray was hitting the shelves of Target and landing on Amazon at the same time. So, Dove found a way to host a marketing activation at the tour to celebrate it. The U.S. leg of the tour wrapped on October 23.
The spray joins the whole-body cream and stick deodorants Dove launched prior. Full-body deodorants have been trending, with brands including Secret, Native and Lume all offering the product as of this year. From March 2023 to March 2024, Google searches for the term “whole body deodorant” increased by 1,600%.
Dove found that there was a conversation happening around the tour and deodorant. Social listening showed 46,000 TikTok views of “Sweat Tour” and “deodorant” in tandem, showing that concert-goers were making the connection themselves, said Dana Paolucci, Dove’s head of PR and influence.
“The Sweat Tour was all over my feed, and we had this product launching. [So I thought], ‘Why don’t we show up for attendees and provide a solution for them?'” she said. The fact that the new product comes in a spray format, making it appropriately shareable, from a hygienic perspective, also motivated the activation. She added that the idea was brought to life in just under two weeks.
“We reached out to the Sweat team and used our insights from social listening to support why we wanted to be there,” Paolucci said.
Dove brought seven creators and five members of the media to the tour. “We had the creators on the ground making content,” Paolucci said. The creators, who were paid partners, included Drew Afualo (8.2 million TikTok followers), Caroline Ricke (3.2 million TikTok followers), Dana Patterson (402,000 Instagram followers) and Becca Mader (76,000 TikTok followers). And their content included tiny mic interviews outside the venue. They asked attendees about sweat — i.e., “Are y’all sweaty girls?” — while spraying them with Dove’s new product.
“We wanted to work with creators who would be great at speaking to attendees. And we always work with creators who use our products or, at least, are curious about trying them,” Paolucci said. “We also wanted creators who matched the aesthetic of the Sweat Tour, knowing that we would also be providing content to the Sweat Tour Instagram, as well as our own Instagram and TikTok.”
For her part, Caroline Ricke said, “The Sweat Tour has been blowing up on social media, and as a huge Charli XCX fan, this collab made sense. … And the connection between deodorant and the tour was spot-on, so it was easy to center the video around the product.”
Further promoting the new product, Dove had decals on the venue floor and eight-second videos playing throughout the show. In addition, the brand took over all women’s and gender-neutral bathrooms throughout the Kia Forum, decking them out with mirror clings stating the deodorant spray’s claims, including that it provides 72 hours of odor control. The product itself was also stocked in bathrooms, allowing sweaty attendees to freshen up. In addition, free full-sized bottles of the product were distributed to concert-goers in branded tote bags.
“The beauty of the Sweat Tour was that it was for everyone,” Paolucci said. “The whole point was for it to be this amazing, communal, fun and very sweaty experience where you can dance for two hours, and it honestly feels like a club.”
As tours gain popularity, brands are finding creative ways to align with artists outside of traditional celebrity endorsements, which can be prohibitively expensive or simply unfeasible. For example, at the start of October, the TikTok-viral heat tools brand Wavytalk tapped Sabrina Carpenter’s hairstylist, Scott King, to become the “official hair tool sponsor” of her Short N’ Sweet Tour.
For Dove’s part, the goal was “reaching the people attending, versus making a celebrity endorsement of any kind,” Paolucci said. Of course, many people post about their experiences at concerts on social media, providing the opportunity for further amplification.
Dove’s Sweat Tour activation was well received. In a post, TikToker Alyssa Yung called it “the best marketing” she’d ever seen at a concert, and comments included sentiments like, “NO LITERALLY!! saw this last night and thought it was genius.” Likewise, TikToker Melissa Brooks posted calling it a “10/10 smells and concert experience.” One commenter said, “That’s actually such a smart collab bc if the whole show smells good you know the deodorant actually works +you don’t be disgusted the whole show 😭.” Overall, Dove achieved a reach of over 14 million between creator content and UGC.
Dove entered the whole-body deodorant category this year, and the product will continue to be a priority in 2025, according to the company. The product is currently offered in just one scent — Coconut & Vanilla — but scent options will expand in the new year, too. According to Dove’s parent company Unilever’s latest earnings, deodorant was a strong point for the company in the third quarter. “Dove continued to grow double-digits, with strength across both core women and Dove Men+Care ranges, including our expansion into the whole-body deodorants market in the first half,” a company statement said.
