In the annals of celebrity endorsement, athletes have been asked to lend their names to sneakers, their faces to razors, and their general aura of competitiveness to everything from insurance to investment apps. Kevin Durant, the Phoenix Suns forward who has won championships, MVP awards, and Olympic gold medals, has now been asked to lend something more specific: his legs.

A campaign from CeraVe, the L'Oréal-owned skin care brand that has built a following among dermatologists and TikTok users alike, posed a simple question, according to James Rowe, president of the branded entertainment studio Bolded at OBB: "What if CeraVe didn't sponsor KD, but really just sponsored KD's legs?"

The resulting three-week effort, which the brand has titled "New Face of Legs," featured a hero video with what might be described as an unusually lingering camera movement, along with television placements, out-of-home advertising, and point-of-sale promotions. The primary focus, however, was social media, where Mr. Durant's considerable following — and his established presence on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter — gave the campaign what Esther Garcia, general manager of CeraVe in the United States, called authenticity.

The results, which the brand shared exclusively with Marketing Brew, suggest the limb-centric approach worked: a 43 percent lift in sales, more than 4.1 billion public relations impressions, and 83 million organic video views. (The informal metric guiding the work, Mr. Rowe said, was whether someone would share it in a group chat, which is either a sign of cultural relevance or a sign of the times.)

Ms. Garcia said the campaign was designed in part to reach men, a demographic where CeraVe had been underindexing, and particularly men of color. The pitch was approved in December, shot in January, and released in February — a timeline that would have seemed brisk even before the advertising industry decided that cultural relevance required moving at the speed of a meme.

"To create any sort of double-digit sales lift is tough to do," Mr. Rowe said. "Forty-three percent is almost unheard of."

At Cannes Lions this week, CeraVe will celebrate the campaign's success at Stagwell's Sport Beach, co-hosted by Boardroom, Mr. Durant's media company. Mr. Durant, presumably, will bring his legs.

Original story published in Marketing Brew: "How CeraVe’s Kevin Durant campaign led to a 43% sales lift"