Word on the Street:: Kevin Durant’s Legs Just Had a Better Campaign Than Most Brands
Word on the Street: Kevin Durant’s Legs Just Had a Better Campaign Than Most Brands
Kevin Durant has an NBA championship, an MVP, Olympic gold medals and enough basketball credentials to make the rest of us feel wildly unproductive.
And now, apparently, he is the New Face of Legs.
CeraVe took one of the internet’s favorite recurring jokes—Kevin Durant’s notoriously dry, “ashy” ankles—and did something many brands would be too nervous, too sanitized, or too committee-approved to attempt: they leaned into it.
Not a little. They built a campaign around it.
Durant read mean social posts. There were paparazzi-style photos with CeraVe conveniently visible in his gym bag. There was a hero video with a slow, gloriously unnecessary pan of the man’s legs. And then CeraVe declared him the “New Face of Legs.”
It is ridiculous.
It is funny.
And it reportedly produced a 43% sales lift.
There is a lesson here for OOH, and it is not, “Put dry ankles on more billboards.” Though, frankly, that might get attention.
The lesson is that the best campaigns do not always begin with a carefully polished brand statement. Sometimes they begin with a cultural truth, an inside joke, a little self-awareness, and a willingness to let the audience in on the gag.
CeraVe did not try to make Kevin Durant look like the glossy, airbrushed skincare spokesman nobody asked for. They made him Kevin Durant—the guy the internet has been teasing for years—and gave him a comeback line: “Next time you take a matter into your own hands, make sure it’s lotion.”
That is how a product message becomes shareable.
And yes, OOH was part of the campaign. But this is where outdoor needs to keep paying attention: the billboard was not asked to carry the entire burden of explanation. It was another chapter in a story already moving through social feeds, group chats, sports culture, PR, video and retail.
That is the sweet spot.
A great OOH execution can be the punchline. It can be the wink. It can be the “wait, did they really put that on a billboard?” moment that makes someone take a picture and send it to six people before they get to the next stoplight.
Too often, we still treat outdoor as the big, handsome final frame where a brand arrives to explain itself in 12 words or fewer.
CeraVe’s legs campaign suggests another possibility: outdoor as part of the mischief.
The campaign was reportedly guided by a wonderfully simple test: would someone share it in a group chat?
That ought to be on more creative briefs.
Because if the answer is no, perhaps the campaign is not yet funny enough, surprising enough, human enough—or worth putting 14 feet in the air.
Kevin Durant’s legs may not be silky. But the campaign was.
Help us. Help you. Please click to subscribe