In April 2025, Billie set out to launch its new bodycare lineup in a way that would make its scent unmissable and generate broad awareness and cultural conversation around the new collection. In a category relying on abstract language to describe fragrance, Billie’s objective was to bring scent to life in a way consumers could instantly understand, engage with, and remember. To do so, the brand invited New Yorkers to literally smell its new coconut vanilla bodycare scent through scratch-and-sniff armpit billboards in high-traffic locations.
Known for bold, conversation-starting marketing, Billie wanted to prove that even a legacy format like OOH could be reinvented to spark joy, challenge taboos, and drive measurable impact. By installing scented billboards throughout the city, Billie encouraged passersby to engage with the scent immediately, rather than waiting to encounter it on a shelf. This unexpected, interactive format created direct, memorable product immersion engineered for both real-world engagement and social sharing.
At its core, the campaign also advanced Billie’s mission to champion the full spectrum of womankind and reframe conversations around things often considered taboo: women’s armpits and body hair. This built on the brand’s history of using creativity to challenge norms, from being the first razor brand to show women’s body hair in advertising to launching campaigns that confront unrealistic beauty standards. Through Scratch and Sniff, Billie’s goal was not only to introduce a new product and scent, but to challenge convention and expand expectations for what beauty and personal care advertising can look like.
Billie’s Scratch and Sniff campaign was concepted in-house with the goal of bringing their new bodycare scent to the forefront and crafting something unexpected for the category that felt unmistakably “Billie.”
They began by briefing the team to think beyond conventional formats and concept a singular, high-impact moment that would bring scent to the forefront in a buzzy, culturally resonant way. From that brief, the idea of scratch-and-sniff billboards, featuring women’s armpits, emerged as an unexpected, tactile execution that literally invited people to stop, engage, and smell the new deodorant in real time.
Once the concept was locked, the execution required some problem-solving. Scratch-and-sniff billboards at scale are far from standard. Billie partnered closely with production vendors and their Product Innovation team to experiment, iterate, and ultimately develop a custom solution that could reliably deliver scent outdoors while maintaining visual integrity. In parallel, the team identified high-traffic placements across New York City to maximize visibility and ensure the experience was encountered, organically, by as many people as possible.
To amplify the launch, Billie partnered with NYC creator @whatisnewyork, whose collaboration post with the brand ignited social buzz and helped propel it into the wider cultural conversation. Layered press outreach across digital, social, and broadcast outlets – along with Coco Villa-themed mailers that showcased the product line and invited media to scratch the boards themselves – helped drive widespread coverage and ensure the campaign lived far beyond its physical footprint.
Billie set out to spark cultural conversation around its new bodycare lineup by making scent impossible to ignore, and the campaign exceeded every objective. Scratch-and-Sniff became a true breakout moment, capturing attention both IRL and online, driving product trial, and setting a new creative benchmark for interactive OOH.
Momentum ignited almost instantly with Billie’s launch partnership with NYC creator @whatisnewyork, generating 4M earned impressions and triggering a wave of organic sharing that propelled the campaign far beyond its physical footprint. In the weeks that followed, Scratch-and-Sniff drove over 5M in-person interactions, 1.75B+ earned impressions, and more than 300 media placements across digital, social, and broadcast outlets, including Good Morning America, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and ABC News.
The campaign also delivered tangible business impact. Coco Villa sales on Amazon increased +60% week-over-week following launch (4/24–4/30), demonstrating the power of immersive, real-world engagement to influence purchase behavior.
Beyond awareness and sales, Scratch-and-Sniff advanced Billie’s broader mission. By featuring women’s armpits and body hair unapologetically, the campaign reframed a traditionally taboo topic and pushed beauty conversations forward, resonating across social media, consumer press, and late-night television. Its influence rippled across the industry, with multiple brands introducing their own scented OOH executions in the months that followed.
Through Scratch-and-Sniff, Billie proved that bold, boundary-pushing creativity can drive results, shape culture, and redefine what’s possible in modern advertising.
