Dr. Squatch hides $1 million in a treasure hunt with IShowSpeed

Dr. Squatch has started a campaign called “Speedrun: Million Dollar Mission” with the streamer IShowSpeed. It hides $1 million in prizes across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. The hunt began on August 31 and runs for nine weeks, until October 31. There are 25 separate challenges spread over that time.

The campaign is built to make videos rather than to buy advert space. Each week a briefcase is hidden in a city. Inside is a gold bar that can be swapped for up to $50,000. Clues to the location are released a little at a time. There are nine briefcases in all. Fans are also asked to post dare-style videos on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube for cash. Bundles of goods sold through TikTok Shop come with scratch tickets, and 25 of those pay $10,000. The whole thing ends with a $250,000 final hunt. Those rules have not been published yet.

More than 4,000 Walmart shops in the United States and Canada, plus other retail partners, act as meeting points. QR codes in the shops link to a leaderboard at SpeedrunMDM.com. The Brooklyn production company Applied MSCHF made the creative work, with help from Echobend Productions. Kyle Beiermeister directed the launch film.

Unilever-owned Dr. Squatch is skipping normal creator advertising

Dr. Squatch was bought by Unilever last year. The brand says plainly that this campaign is an alternative to normal creator advertising. John Ludeke, the brand’s chief brand officer, told Marketing Dive the aim was “really to be very participatory, to get the community activated”. He said the marketing should be built from the bottom up rather than pushed from the top down. Put simply, the brand is paying for Speed’s community, not only for his face.

That difference matters because marketers are less willing to pay high fees for a single creator post. Dr. Squatch has also brought in hundreds of other creators whose job is to film the chase. That turns one celebrity deal into two months of content. The TikTok Shop part also links the stunt to sales, which most creator campaigns still find hard to show.

Turnout in the cities hiding the briefcases is the real test

The test will be how many people actually turn up in the cities where the briefcases are hidden, rather than how many people saw the adverts. The other test is whether the bundles sell on TikTok Shop. If it works, other Unilever brands may try the same approach with their own creator partners before the holiday season.