A 10-foot, 180-pound ball of human hair rolling through New York City is gross. It’s weird, in fact, it’s kind of horrifying. And that’s exactly why K18’s Tumblehair worked.
The activation was created to launch K18’s new hair longevity serum, taking the problem the product addresses, hair shedding, and making it impossible to ignore. Instead of trying to make hair loss beautiful or aspirational, they leaned into the visceral reaction people already have to loose hair. People were both disgusted and fascinated. Most importantly, people really wanted to talk about it.
K18 reports that the stunt ultimately generated 6.62 million in earned media value and reached more than 15 million people on social, with 98.1% of that reach coming from user-generated content. So, what can the rest of us take from a giant hairball?
Bring the experience to the audience. Tumblehair wasn’t tucked inside a pop-up that people had to choose to visit. It rolled through Midtown, the West Village, Chinatown and the Seaport before eventually arriving at a Sephora activation. The public didn't have to seek out the experience. The experience found them.
Don't be afraid of a reaction. K18 knew people would think it was disgusting. Their CMO said they expected people to either be “disgusted or obsessed with it,” and saw value in both reactions because it generated real and raw responses.
Make the problem as memorable as the solution. Instead of starting with the serum, K18 started with the thing consumers actually experience, the unglamorous hair shedding. The product story came naturally afterward.
The major takeaway when I saw the K18 hairball rolling through my feed was the question: What’s the thing our audience already recognizes, feels or struggles with, and how can we bring that story directly to them in a way that’s impossible to ignore?
K18 didn’t wait for people to come experience their brand. They took a familiar problem, made it massive, and rolled it right into their audience’s world. Sometimes the best experiential idea isn’t creating somewhere for people to go. It’s creating something they can’t help but notice when it comes to them.