US Advertisers of the Month for May: The Legend of Zelda, Dove and GoodRX
The US Advertisers of the Month for May are The Legend of Zelda, Dove and GoodRX, meaning that they showed large increases in Ad Awareness for the month. Ad Awareness is a measure of the proportion of consumers that have seen an advertisement for a given brand in the past two weeks.
Ad Awareness for game franchise The Legend of Zelda more than doubled in May, moving from 5.2% to 10.5%. The latest installment, Tears of the Kingdom, was released on May 12 to critical acclaim and an eager audience.
The game sold more than 10 million copies in the first three days, making it the fastest-selling title in the 37-year-old franchise. Tears of the Kingdom retains the open-world design of the previous Zelda game, Breath of the Wild (2017). Press coverage for the new game has reached beyond gaming-specific media to mainstream outlets, marking its widespread impact.
Dove’s Ad Awareness rose from 27.4% to 32.1% in May for a gain of 4.7 percentage points. This improvement may be related to a short film titled “Cost of Beauty” from the Dove Self-Esteem Project, which has already been viewed nearly 5 million times on the Dove US YouTube channel.
The aim of the project is to highlight the harms to self-esteem caused by social media. The Dove Self-Esteem Project has previously partnered with popstar Lizzo and the brand has also prominently supported The CROWN Act against hair discrimination, as well as partnering with Epic Games to promote body-positivity in video games.
GoodRX, founded in 2011, is a platform and mobile app that tracks prescription drug prices in the US. During May, Ad Awareness for the service rose from 20.1% to 24.1% for a gain of four percentage points. A recent TV ad focuses on the inconvenience and discomfort caused by the spring season. The brand also publishes regular educational content relating to drugs and health on its health page.
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Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. A brand’s Ad Awareness score is based on the question: “Which of the following consumer brands have you seen an advertisement for in the past two weeks?” Data from surveys of adults aged 18 years and above residing in the United States from April 26 and May 25, 2023. Ad Awareness scores are based on a four-week moving average. The change in scores for each brand is calculated by taking the difference between the highest and lowest scoring days within the period. Learn more about BrandIndex.