Nostalgic Glow Helps Pantene Shine

When you think of Pantene ads you think of supermodels with stunning, flowing hair. You probably don’t think of a retro 1950s diner. But the brand, with agency Grey London, prove the two worlds are more than compatible in their new ad starring country singer Kelsea Ballerini.

Country music and iconography is having a real cultural moment right now, from Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter album to the huge ratings success of TV’s Yellowstone. There’s a renewed interest from brands in producing ads which nod to that heartland heritage while still using modern talent. Pantene’s tongue-in-cheek, but loving recreation of a 1950s aesthetic fits the bill perfectly.

Ballerini plays a waitress with hair repair, not food, on her menu. When two customers come in with damaged, “country-fried” hair, she knows exactly what to offer them. The order arrives – Pantene products on serving plates – and a parade of those glossy-haired models shows that this diner’s service really is top quality.

The hair color and styling sector is one of the lower-performing categories on our Test Your Ad platform. The average ad is product obsessed, cliched, based on hard to prove functional benefits, and a turn-off for viewers: the average Star Rating for the category is a low 1.8-Stars. In this context, Pantene excels, scoring 3.2-Stars which puts it into the top 5% of hair product ads. Replacing generic product promotion with wit, nostalgia and star quality pays off handsomely.

When it comes to the short-term effectiveness of the ad and its speed of brand recognition, Pantene scores even better. It gets Exceptional results on both short-term Spike Rating and Brand Fluency (speed and accuracy of recognition). People know who the ad is for, it’s highly motivating, and they enjoy it.

So what makes this ad so effective? It’s not just seizing a cultural moment, though that certainly helps. In Orlando Wood’s Lemon and Look Out books, he describes how important a sense of place and time can be in an ad. These elements help engage the right hemisphere of the brain, which pays attention to context and relationships and is vital for helping brands make lasting, positive impressions. As our Test Your Ad Pro report shows, Pantene scores above the norm on all the right-brained elements, especially “Set In The Past”. In comparison, most hair product ads are set in a generic bathroom or even a void, with no sense of character, place, or narrative. Pantene’s work here has a nostalgic charm that makes the product – and the hair – shine even brighter.