After Dr. Squatch’s “Body Wash Genie” campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney amassed thousands of fan comments begging for her bathwater, the men’s grooming brand saw an opportunity to turn a throwaway internet joke into a cultural lightning rod.
The idea was to meet the moment head-on by creating Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss, a limited-edition bar soap infused with Sydney’s actual bathwater from the shoot. The campaign needed to spark mainstream cultural conversation while still reinforcing the brand’s mission: inspiring men to care more about what they put on their bodies.
Objectives included building anticipation around a limited-edition product drop that created urgency and FOMO, leveraging Sydney’s fanbase and Dr. Squatch’s owned channels to ignite conversation and engagement, and converting that cultural attention into measurable brand growth. The team also aimed to extend the campaign across multiple touchpoints to ensure the story lived everywhere men consume media.
We designed an integrated strategy that treated the drop like a fashion launch – anchored in earned, fueled by social, amplified through creators, and extended through out-of-home. Every channel had a purpose, building from anticipation to amplification while keeping one unified story: Dr. Squatch turned the internet’s most ridiculous request into a real product and made men’s care unmissable.
The biggest challenge was balancing shock value with authenticity: the campaign had to entertain without losing sight of the brand’s message. By keeping the tone self-aware, transparent, and rooted in Dr. Squatch’s mission of better-for-you care, we created a campaign that not only lived cross-channel at launch but also continued to trend, spark reactions, and earn coverage for months afterward.
OOH: Brought the viral conversation happening online into people’s IRL commute. OOH wheat paste posters infused with the exclusive scent of Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss were hung in hip NYC, LA, and CHI neighborhoods, with different creative after the soap sold out.
The campaign met and exceeded every objective, becoming one of the most talked-about moments of the year.
Earned media efforts generated 5,225 placements and 74 billion impressions across digital, broadcast, radio, and new media, spanning top-tier outlets including The New York Times, CNN, USA Today, Vanity Fair, People, BuzzFeed, and Good Morning America. Sydney was asked about the stunt on an E! News red carpet, and it was mentioned during the Late Night with Seth Meyers monologue during launch week. New-media outlets like Kale Salad and Memezar extended the conversation through viral commentary and thousands of reactive threads, and top pop culture podcasts like The Toast dissected the stunt.
On social media, the campaign drove 10 billion impressions across platforms, attracted 100K new Instagram followers for Dr. Squatch, and trended across X and TikTok, with organic mentions from Mr. Beast & Logan Paul. Influencer partnerships generated 7,819,429 impressions and 300K engagements, and OOH in NYC, CHI, and LA generated 803,000 impressions.
The product ranked among eBay’s top 20 most-searched items, attracted more than 1 million giveaway entries, and sold out in under one minute. Dr. Squatch saw a 132% increase in site sessions and 20% revenue growth week over week, cementing the campaign as both a cultural and commercial triumph. Coverage framed Bathwater Bliss as the next evolution of Dr. Squatch’s fearless storytelling, and it as a brand unafraid to use humor, creativity, and cultural fluency to remind men why what they use on their bodies matters.
