CeraVe at 20 - Is This the Only Brand Getting the Internet Right?

When many skincare brands are chasing every TikTok trend going, CeraVe seems to be getting its wins by participating in the deceptively simple, lost art of listening. Not only to dermatologists, though they sit at the very heart of the brand, but to Reddit, memes, scalp-moisturising hacks, and the chronically-online generation remixing science into culture.

It’s this unlikely marriage that has enabled the brand to grow from a trio of pharmacists dispensing moisturisers into the $1 billion household name it is today. And, according to Kelly Buchanan Spillers, CeraVe’s global head of digital and social, the formula hasn’t really changed; it’s just scaled.

“From the beginning, CeraVe was built on the profound dermatological insight that virtually all skin issues are fundamentally barrier issues,” she tells LBB. Every product, therefore, no matter how viral, is packed with the skin-identical ceramides and delivered through the brand’s proprietary MultiVesicular Emulsion (MVE) technology.

But, while the science hasn’t undergone much metamorphosis, the stage it plays out on certainly has. If the brand’s early growth came from dermatologist endorsements and pharmacy aisles, this global pop culture moment came thanks to a Super Bowl campaign starring the internet’s most unlikely skincare messiah, Michael Cera.

It began, of course, with a meme.

“A Reddit thread where a user humorously questioned if Michael Cera had created CeraVe,” ignited the spark, says Kelly. Spotted through the brand’s “mass amount of listening” across social platforms, the joke became the launchpad for a three-pronged campaign that built deliberately – almost anti-climactically – towards a celebrity reveal.

First came the ‘leaks’, then the online buzz, before the full Super Bowl spot confirmed it: Michael Cera was not, in fact, the brand’s founder – but he was very much in on the joke.

Instead of hammering home the product benefits or using polished, shiny-skinned influencers, the team simply sat back and let the internet do what it does best. “The primary risk was misinterpretation or the humour falling flat,” says Kelly. “But by grounding it in authenticity and self-awareness, we mitigated these.”

‘Authenticity’ is a word that Kelly returns to frequently, whether she’s talking about dermatologists – who remain “front and centre of our marketing communications” – or creators, who are only brought on board if they “genuinely use and love CeraVe”. That element of credibility is crucial when your marketing strategy depends on walking a line between scientific education and meme-literate humour.

Internally, the brand’s digital team is structured to stay nimble. “Our core social media team is a dynamic, multi-generational group, united by being ‘chronically online’,” says Kelly. They’re supported by agency partners with advanced social listening tools, and an open culture where ideas “can come from anywhere in the organisation.”

It’s the same setup that allowed the team to notice another core behaviour – people using moisturiser on their scalps – and quickly spin it into a formal product launch and campaign allied to ‘Head of CeraVe’ as the brand entered haircare earlier this year.

But, Kelly’s team is chasing far more than viral moments. The pandemic-era boom, when like-for-like sales shot up by 82% in early 200, was a lesson in education over gimmickry. “This period validated the growing consumer understanding of skin barrier health and highlighted the power of our ‘edutainment’ model,” says Kelly.

The now-familiar slogan, ‘Like a derm’, was born in the moment – a pithy encapsulation of the brand's guiding principle: give everyone access to the kind of care a dermatologist would recommend, at an accessible price.

Now, the brand’s ‘therapeutic skincare for all’ ethos is shaping the next chapter too. As CeraVe doubles its reach in Latin America and Africa, the team is focused on building “robust local creator ecosystems” and delivering “hyper-personalised edutainment”.

Science remains the anchor, but future campaigns will be increasingly community-driven, fuelled by user behaviours and conversations rather than top-down messaging.
Of course, scale requires structure, and behind the memes is a business operation tracking everything from sentiment analysis to search interest and market share. “We measure ROI through metrics reflecting deeper engagement and business impact,” Kelly tells me. Brand health studies, conversion tracking and user-generated content will help to paint a picture of what’s working, and what feels authentic.

Twenty years in, CeraVe is still developing every product with dermatologists. But, it’s also letting Reddit threads shape its ad strategy, creators bring the tone, and memes lead the way. We see it often on socials – brands running after cool with moves that feel increasingly desperate. Maybe CeraVe’s biggest flex of all is that it never tries too hard.

Because, when your brand name sounds like an indie actor's surname, and your community does the campaign planning for you, all you really have to do is really, really, listen.