When Luis Garcia, chief marketing officer of Naterra, talks to people about the Tree Hut sugar scrub brand, the conversation usually goes one of two ways – they have a daughter aged 10-25 who is a diehard fan or they have never heard of the brand.
“We have very low consumer awareness,” he explains. “Whoever knows it, loves it, but not everybody knows us, so we’re facing an awareness challenge.”
Competitive brands like eos and Native have around 50% awareness and Dove has 98% but Tree Hut is only about 25%. Garcia wants to change all of this, which is why he is doing the brand’s first-ever Super Bowl ad. Tree Hut will run a regional spot in selected markets, plus a national Super Bowl spot on digital broadcasts.
“There’s no bigger stage to accelerate brand awareness at scale,” says Garcia. “And that’s why we’re choosing to do this Super Bowl.”
The campaign started with a rebrand on Christmas 2025 and will run through the end of March with the Super Bowl spot being the central moment. As a brand that grew in popularity through partnerships with creators, the company decided to feature these community members in their big game ad. “We’re a very viral social media brand, and we want to really showcase self-care, self-expression with our new look and feel,” explains Garcia.
Brand Innovators caught up with Garcia to discuss the new Super Bowl ad and growing the brand across channels. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
The Super Bowl ad is a huge buy. Who are you hoping to reach with this ad?
Our audience is 12-25 girls. There’s tons of data that this particular demographic has increased their viewership of football. Taylor Swift did a great favor to the NFL, but also a great favor to dads who can sometimes have a difficult time connecting and having something in common.
Watching the game together or just watching the ads allows families to spend time in the same environment to increase that relationship and connection, which is a beautiful story. We want to showcase how amazing our products are during these moments. Everybody deserves a moment to feel good during the day and why not do it during your everyday everything shower?
Why was this the year for your brand to enter the big game?
People do not know Tree Hut. I have had people come interview for positions at the company and then hear Tree Hut and say, “I didn’t know you were Tree Hut, I have your product in my shower.” We did the most difficult thing as a marketeer, which is you buy the product, but you don’t know the brand. Bringing the brand forward was very important.
The time is now because we’re in this really large macro cycle. The late 2015s, it was all about the naturals. It was Jennifer Aniston time. Then COVID hit and it was all CeraVe and lab coats and wellness. Everything was black and white. We just entered this macro cycle where the shoppers, the girlies, the consumers want to live in color. They want scent. They want fragrance. We are riding that wave. We are perfectly positioned and we’re already a staple on that wave. Nobody does scent better than Tree Hut.
This is our time to strive because we’re expanding into multiple categories. The challenge for us is that we’re well known in the specialty path but if you go straight to buy a body lotion or body wash, we’re not there in that aisle. We are doing that expansion this year.
What goes into making a great Super Bowl ad?
It’s very competitive, obviously, so we were very selective. We have worked with creators since day one. There’s a group of creators that we call the OGs. We wanted to do something different – taking the guidelines as a social-first fun brand, where feeling good and having fun are part of your daily routine. That’s our purpose. Instead of working with traditional actors and extras, we feature creators in the ad. We had a great time. It’s really getting transformed by that scent, and then letting your inner self come out and have fun.
The whole campaign rebrand, what we call glow up, is Uncontain Yourself. It’s really driven by joyful expression. Everybody knows our sugar scrubs but now how we are representing their daily life. We partnered with Dave Myers –a world renowned director who directed Bad Bunny’s last year’s Super Bowl ad for Pepsi last year. We’re making a huge investment in world class creative and to be able to express that joyful environment as much as possible.
How will retail support the ad?
One of the biggest fails for brands is they sometimes do a Super Bowl ad, but that’s it. For us, the Super Bowl is just one tactic. Our relaunch started on Christmas Day and has all the media behind it. We also partner with our retailer partners – Target, Walmart, CVS, Amazon and the like – to be able to have our largest investment capture the consumers there.
If we’re going to tease Tree Hut in an ad, as soon as consumers go to Target, the product needs to be available. This is the first time that we’ve done so much off-shelf display. People don’t need to come and find us on the shelf, we’re going to be out there. We have off-shelf secondary placement across all of our partners. We’re also doing some takeovers on certain pages where we’ll be showcasing as well. We are doing a big Amazon push to make sure that we are there. This is basically the largest investment we’ve ever done to be visible, and it really culminates with Super Bowl lighting the spark.
Can you talk about working with the creators?
We’re actually super happy because these are creators that work with the brand, but they never work together. These creators like Paul Fino (@paulreactss) and Emily Lula May (@emilylulamay) have millions of followers. We spent a week in Mexico where we filmed the commercial and they became friends and they started to create some content together. As that comes out people are going to be like, “What, why are they together? My two favorite creators.” We’re trying to engage in that conversation. They have a lot of content that they have created that they’ll be sharing the week leading up to the game. As with everything social, we provide very broad guardrails and say just go and create and have fun.
