Pantene turns Alix Earle's 'expired' shampoo find into a 24-hour product drop — Gold Effie

In December 2024, TikTok creator Alix Earle — more than 11 million followers across Instagram and TikTok — posted a video raving that an 'expired' bottle of Pantene found in her family's shower made her hair feel better than her luxury products. The post went viral and spawned 180-plus organic creator posts, part of a broader 'drugstore hair care renaissance'. Pantene had to convert that momentum into trial and brand love instead of letting the moment fade.

Answer the viral moment with a product: package Pantene's formulas as the Unexpired collection with the creator who started it, available for exactly 24 hours.

Grey New York and Pantene partnered with Earle on the 'Unexpired Pantene' collection: existing formulas in custom bottles tied to her routine, revealed at launch. It was available for 24 hours from April 30, 2025 via an online sweepstakes — a wink at an Instagram story's lifespan. Pantene overhauled its own TikTok and Instagram channels with real-time updates, creators Madison Harwell and Jaelyn Kay added UGC, and Times Square and The Oculus billboards in New York carried the drop, built on the line: if expired Pantene was that good, imagine it unexpired.

Earle's original video drew more than 7 million views and 600,000 likes; Marketing Dive counted over 180 pieces of follow-on organic UGC; the campaign registered more than 230 million impressions. At the 2026 Effie Awards US Gala, 'Unexpired Pantene' won a Gold Effie and was named a Grand Effie contender, with Procter & Gamble's North America hair care VP crediting the speed of acting on a creator-supercharged conversation.

In December 2024, Alix Earle posted a TikTok about an 'expired' bottle of Pantene shampoo in her family's shower, saying it left her hair feeling better than her premium products. The casual review drew more than 7 million views and 600,000 likes, and other creators piled on — 180-plus organic posts praising the drugstore brand, riding what marketers were calling the drugstore hair care renaissance.

Rather than treating the post as earned media, Pantene and Grey New York made it a product. They worked with Earle on the 'Unexpired Pantene' collection: existing Pantene formulas in custom bottles tied to her routine, sold through an online sweepstakes open for exactly 24 hours from April 30, 2025 — a nod to how long an Instagram story lives. Real-time updates ran across Pantene's TikTok and Instagram, Earle shared her own content, and billboards appeared in Times Square and The Oculus in New York.

The framing was the campaign: if an expired Pantene made a mega-influencer's hair look that good, imagine it unexpired. Creators Madison Harwell and Jaelyn Kay added UGC once the drop was live, and the brand's own channels were overhauled around the launch, pairing urgency with authenticity for a Gen Z and millennial audience.

The effort registered more than 230 million impressions and won a Gold Effie at the 2026 Effie Awards US Gala, where it was a Grand Effie contender. Procter & Gamble's vice president of North America hair care described it as a team activating instantly on a conversation the creator had supercharged.

It converted an organic consumer moment into an owned product instead of letting a viral post expire unused.

The 24-hour window mirrored the speed of social media itself, turning FOMO into demand and news coverage.

The creator's story stayed the message: packaging carried Earle's exact words, so authenticity did the selling.

It leveraged the 'drugstore hair care renaissance' to reposition Pantene as a smarter buy than luxury brands.

When a consumer's happy accident goes viral, don't just repost it — ship the joke as a product with a deadline; scarcity converts cultural buzz into demand and makes the creator the campaign.

Coverage of the drop framed it as a landmark example of brands reacting in real time to creator content, and Pantene's team said the idea grew directly out of Earle's routine and conversation. At the 2026 Effie Awards US Gala, 'Unexpired Pantene' won a Gold Effie and was named one of the year's Grand Effie contenders alongside campaigns from Uber Eats, Pringles and Tubi.