Dove is using the 2026 US Open as a platform for a broader advertising strategy that blends experiential marketing, creator-led content, social media, sports partnerships, and physical fan experiences.
The Unilever-owned personal care brand is launching its “Don’t Sweat It. Make A Racket.” campaign around the tournament, using Dove Antiperspirant to connect product messaging with the fashion, fan culture, and energy surrounding one of tennis’s biggest events.
Rather than relying solely on traditional sports sponsorship placements, the campaign is designed to create multiple consumer touchpoints, from an on-site refresh destination at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center to social content, photography collaborations, and activations at women-owned sports bars across the U.S.
For the advertising industry, the campaign illustrates how brands are increasingly treating major sporting events as cultural ecosystems rather than simply media properties. The strategy combines physical experiences with content that can travel across social platforms, potentially extending the value of the sponsorship beyond the tournament venue.
Dove Builds an IRL-to-Digital Advertising Strategy
At the center of the campaign is The Re[set] Club by Dove, a dedicated refresh destination at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
The space is designed to give attendees a place to cool down, refresh, and prepare for the day’s matches while interacting with Dove Advanced Care products, beauty and style essentials, and branded photo experiences.
From an AdTech perspective, the activation demonstrates the continuing convergence of experiential advertising and digital content. Physical brand experiences increasingly serve as content-generation environments, producing photographs, interviews, social posts, and other material that can extend a campaign’s reach beyond people physically attending an event.
Dove is also emphasizing its Invisible collection, which it positions around protection without visible white marks. That product attribute is being connected directly to the campaign’s fashion narrative, giving the brand a functional reason to participate in conversations about tournament style.
The approach is different from simply placing a logo around a tennis court. The advertising concept is built around a consumer behavior—getting dressed, attending matches, taking photos, cheering, and participating in fan culture—and then connects that behavior to the product.
Creator Partnerships Bring Fashion Into the Campaign
Dove is partnering with photographer and cultural creatives Tyrell Hampton and Johnny Criollo of Watching New York for “Don’t Sweat Your Fit,” a content initiative focused on the fashion and personal style surrounding the US Open.
The creators will capture tournament looks, trends, and individual expressions of style, linking Dove Invisible’s product positioning with the broader visual culture around the event.
Creator-led campaigns have become an important part of modern advertising because they can provide a more native connection to social audiences than conventional brand-produced advertising.
For marketers, the value is not simply access to an influencer’s followers. Creator partnerships can also provide brands with a different creative language, production style, and cultural perspective.
That is particularly relevant for sports properties, where fan behavior increasingly extends beyond watching the competition itself. Apparel, photography, social commentary, athlete culture, food, music, and community all become potential advertising contexts.
Dove’s campaign is designed to capture those peripheral experiences rather than focusing exclusively on the tennis matches.
USTA Partnership Extends the Conversation
The campaign also includes “Racquet Report,” a social content series created with the USTA.
Host and comedian Carly Aquilino will interview fans at the tournament, focusing on the looks, conversations, and opinions that contribute to the event’s identity.
This is another example of an advertising campaign being designed as a content engine.
Instead of separating sponsorship from social media, Dove is creating an editorial-style format around the event that can potentially generate multiple pieces of short-form content. Fan interviews can be adapted to social platforms while maintaining the campaign’s central theme.
For advertising teams, this type of integration can make sponsorship assets more flexible. A single physical event can provide the foundation for social video, creator content, photography, branded experiences, and paid media.
The result is an increasingly interconnected campaign architecture in which the physical event is only one part of the media strategy.
Women’s Sports Become a Community Activation
Dove is also using the US Open Women’s Finals to create a separate community-oriented activation.
Under “Make A Racket at Women-Owned Sports Bars,” the brand will open tabs at ten women-owned sports bars across the U.S., providing complimentary food and drinks for fans watching major tournament matches.
The activation connects Dove with the growing cultural and commercial momentum around women’s sports while moving the campaign away from the stadium itself.
This is strategically important because sports advertising is becoming less dependent on a single venue. Fans can experience the same event through sports bars, social platforms, streaming services, watch parties, and creator content.
Brands consequently have more opportunities to build distributed experiences around major sports properties.
Dove’s approach places women’s sports fandom and community at the center of that strategy rather than treating the tournament purely as a media-buying opportunity.
What the Campaign Means for AdTech
Dove’s US Open strategy reflects an advertising environment in which brands increasingly need to connect experiential marketing, social content, creators, sponsorships, and digital distribution.
Traditional sports sponsorship can deliver reach and association with a major property. But modern campaigns increasingly attempt to make that sponsorship measurable and reusable across other channels.
That creates opportunities for advertising technology. Campaign teams can use social analytics, audience intelligence, content performance data, creator measurement platforms, and digital attribution tools to understand which components of an experiential campaign generate the strongest engagement.
The broader challenge is measurement. A fan who visits The Re[set] Club, appears in a social video, watches Dove content later, and eventually purchases a deodorant product creates a fragmented customer journey. Connecting those touchpoints remains considerably more difficult than measuring a conventional digital ad impression or click.
For enterprise marketers, that makes integrated campaign architecture increasingly important. Brands need consistent creative and audience strategies across physical and digital environments while maintaining privacy-conscious measurement practices.
Dove’s campaign shows how a consumer brand can use a major sports property as a distributed media platform—one that spans venue experiences, creators, social content, community events, and product messaging.
Market Landscape
Sports marketing is moving toward a hybrid model in which sponsorships increasingly function as content and experience platforms.
Brands such as Nike, Adidas, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and other global advertisers have long used major sporting events to build cultural relevance. The newer layer is the technology infrastructure connecting these campaigns to digital audiences.
Connected TV, social video, creator platforms, retail media, programmatic advertising, and first-party data can all extend a sponsorship beyond its original physical footprint.
For AdTech teams, this creates a more complex planning environment. Campaign performance can no longer be judged solely by television reach or venue exposure. Marketers increasingly want to understand engagement across every consumer touchpoint.
Dove’s US Open campaign provides a clear example of this transition. The brand is using physical experiences to generate participation, creators to generate content, social formats to sustain conversation, and community activations to broaden access.
The campaign’s underlying lesson is straightforward: sports sponsorship is increasingly becoming an omnichannel advertising strategy rather than a static branding placement.
Top Insights
- Dove’s US Open campaign combines experiential marketing, creator content, social video, sports sponsorship, and community activations into one integrated advertising strategy.
- The Re[set] Club turns a physical tournament space into a branded consumer experience while creating opportunities for social content and audience engagement.
- Creator collaboration with Tyrell Hampton and Johnny Criollo brings tournament fashion into the campaign, connecting product functionality with cultural and visual storytelling.
- The USTA partnership and Racquet Report series demonstrate how brands can transform sponsorship assets into recurring social content rather than one-time advertising placements.
- Women’s sports bar activations extend Dove’s campaign beyond the tournament venue, creating community touchpoints around the growing audience and cultural momentum of women’s sports.
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