Saje is spotlighting one of its longest-running and most-popular products, turning Peppermint Halo customer reviews into the creative foundation for a new video campaign.
Developed by Saje’s in-house creative team with production partner Plot, “The Halo Effect” spot takes the often-polished and serious world of wellness advertising in a more irreverent direction, using its the brand’s comment sections as advertising copy. The digital-first spot turns customer language into a fictional casting call in which an improv performer acts out the reviews word for word.
Chief brand officer, Jess Willis, tells strategy that she came upon the concept while reading e-commerce feedback for Peppermint Halo, an aromatic roll-on oil designed to relieve headaches that has been part of Saje’s portfolio for close to three decades.
Images courtesy of Saje
“It was digging into thousands and thousands of reviews to pick the most interesting ones, but also the ones that were really demonstrative of the power of Peppermint Halo,” says Willis, who was appointed to her current position in June after four years as Saje’s executive creative director. “We thought it was not only a great way to celebrate the Saje community, but also create something that’s going to stand out and be disruptive.”
Short-form executions take the concept further, dramatizing individual comments about using the peppermint scent to cover up a nearby commuter’s garlic breath and a special Western-inspired Calgary Stampede video.
“The Halo Effect” launched in late July across Meta, YouTube and connected TV, with executions geo-targeted to specific markets. Willis says the hero video has exceeded the brand’s YouTube benchmarks by 300%, while the rollout’s social content has become Saje’s best-performing content by engagement. Sales of Peppermint Halo, she adds, have risen nearly 50% during the campaign period.
The work builds on Saje’s 2024 rebrand by One23West, which Willis says was intended to re-establish the company’s challenger-brand and grassroots mentality through more distinctive voice within wellness. Its “Remedy Real Life” platform positions the brand as a pressure-relief valve for everyday life, while avoiding wellness tropes where “everything’s pastel. Everyone talks about rituals.”
“We like to call ourselves the A24 of wellness,” she says. For Saje, it’s a practical response to operating with smaller budgets than larger-scale competitors. Willis says the brand needs creative that can “punch above its weight” rather than relying on media scale.
The Peppermint Halo campaign is the first time since Willis joined Saje that the brand has put such a concentrated marketing push behind a single legacy product. She says the approach will continue in upcoming work, including a series of new spots planned for the week’s ahead built around blind smell tests for Saje’s fall diffuser blends.
“I want work that performs, not performance work that feels under-crafted … we always wanted to keep our brand a little bit left of centre and be challenging by being a little bit quirky. We’re serious about keeping you well, but we always want to make sure we’re driving that message forward through creative innovation.”
