This spring has been one of the roughest on allergy sufferers. But for fans of the Netflix hit series Bridgerton, “Polin season” and “pollen season” was the right marketing treatment supplied by Haleon, the global consumer health company behind brands like Advil, Sensodyne, and Flonase.
In this case, adding a dose of allergy reliever Flonase sponsorship to Bridgerton’s third season was considered a good way to ease consumers “sensitivity” to streaming ads.
“It’s becoming increasingly hard to connect with consumers because there’s such fragmentation,” Kelly Kavanagh, U.S. senior director for Integrated Marketing and Media at Haleon, told Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein at the Digitas NewFront. “To break through, we’re finding that it’s even more important to make sure that our brands are taking that step to really find what connects with the consumer.”
Bridgerton’s Polin season
The marketing partnership’s origins sound like it came from the playfully romantic mind of Shonda Rhimes, founder of Shondaland, the production company behind Gray’s Anatomy, How To Get Away With Murder, and Bridgerton. In fact, when Bridgerton’s third season was gearing up for release, Shondaland reached out to Haleon with an idea.
Bridgerton season 3 focuses on the romance between characters Penelope and Colin, dubbed by its legions of fans “Polin,” a homophone for the plant dust that makes many sneeze. Flonase was up for the opportunity.
“They knew that their couple of the season was ‘Polin’ and it was coming out right at the kickoff of allergy season,” Kavanagh said. “There’s nothing more flattering when leading brands and their own entity at programming come to us and say, ‘Hey, this brand makes a lot of sense.’”
The resulting campaign for Flonase played on the timing with clever storytelling. “Too bad Flonase didn’t exist back in the day when there was the ‘talk of the ton’ going on,” Kavanagh said, referring to the mention of “the ton” that’s used in the series to signify high society as in the expression for good manners, “le bon ton.”
The campaign leveraged multiple platforms, recognizing that Bridgerton fans consume content everywhere. “We had it on our own properties. We tried to leverage it with some of our D2C partners. We actually really did a lot of social because that’s where most people are consuming,” she said.
Results exceeded expectations. The campaign delivered a 29% brand lift, over 300,000 earned media impressions, and increased awareness for an already well-known brand.
Trust in the AI era
As AI transforms how consumers search and consume information, Haleon takes a proactive approach to maintaining trust. The company partners with the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity to watermark its content.
“When we use a lot of expert talent when we create materials that we either put on social media or even on television and digital platforms,” Kavanagh said. “We actually put watermarks on our content in digital, that you can then click on the ad itself and a box of information comes down where you can see that the claims that we’re making are valid.”
This transparency matters especially for a healthcare company. “We take this very seriously at Haleon because we are a healthcare organization and our mission is everyday health with humanity,” she said. “That humanity, we mean building trust and making sure that people know that they can trust whatever content we put out there for our brands is coming from a fact-based credible place.”
Beyond awareness
While the Flonase campaign tapped into cultural relevance, Haleon’s work with Sensodyne demonstrates a different approach to brand storytelling. The company produced “Sensory Overload,” a documentary with Vox Productions now available on Hulu.
The film tells stories of neurodiverse individuals and families navigating dental care. “20% of our population are considered neurodiverse. About 90% of them claim that they’re uncomfortable going to the dentist,” Kavanagh noted.
But Haleon didn’t stop at raising awareness. The company partnered with the American Dental Association and nonprofit Culture City to offer six accredited hours of training for dentists.
“We’ve been able to figure out, well, how can we even make this more meaningful and impactful and not just talk about it, but really make the change that we think is needed,” Kavanagh said.
Meeting consumers everywhere
The fragmentation of media consumption drives Haleon’s multi-platform approach. When audiences anticipate new content, they seek information across channels.
“They’re consuming all as much media and different materials as they can about the actors in the films, on their social media reels, in news, podcast, whatever it may be,” Kavanagh observed. “We really tried to recognize that it wasn’t just about one place and one type of experience tied to that content partnership, but there were a lot of different ways and a lot of different likes to extend it.”
For a company managing brands from Centrum to Robitussin, the challenge isn’t just name recognition, Kavanagh said, adding, “It’s really important that we not only make sure that people recognize the brand name, but have an understanding of the meaning behind their purpose and what service we help support all of our consumers and those with healthcare needs.”
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