Hacking the "How-To": Using Gen AI and hyper-relevant media to turn urgent searches into unprecedented brand growth.
Head & Shoulders is the undisputed global leader in dandruff removal and prevention. However, the brand is vulnerable at the Point of Market Entry – the moment when dandruff and itchy scalp first appear, typically during puberty.
Rivals enjoy a built-in advantage with first-time dandruff sufferers as they can offer anti-dandruff variants of popular family brands.
Our mission was to protect H&S’s leadership at its most critical vulnerability: first-time dandruff sufferers.
Today’s teens and young adults don’t ask their parents when faced with an urgent personal problem, they ask the internet. “How to…” searches dominate, with “How to remove…” queries representing moments of acute urgency and full attention.
We reframed H&S as the benchmark for fast, easy and complete removal in Israel, driving relevance, consideration and preference at the exact moment solutions were being sought.
We mapped the top 80% “how to remove” searches, then using Gen AI video tools tailor-made pre-roll ads. Every film was instantly adapted to the specific query, humorously acknowledging the problem at hand, before landing a simple provocation: “If only everything were as easy to remove and prevent as dandruff.”
Across TikTok and YouTube, H&S owned “removal” by intercepting high-intent, high attention “How to Remove” searches with hyper-relevant creative.
Reframing dandruff removal as part of a broader cultural behaviour – urgent removal –attracted a new generation of consumers.
The hyper-contextual executions drove standout attention and recall (+17%), outperforming standard pre-roll benchmarks and reinforced H&S’s association with fast, effective problem-solving.
H&S became the No. 1 brand for removal among our target, boosting brand preference at the Point of Market Entry. H&S grew to its highest-ever share: 22.7%, almost a quarter of the market (+1.4% vs. the average share in the previous year).
