Jacques Spitzer from Raindrop joined Sean Frank and Matt Bertulli on the Operators Podcast to break down one of advertising’s most celebrated success stories. From Dr. Squatch’s humble $3 million beginnings to its recent $1.5 billion Unilever acquisition, Spitzer revealed the creative philosophy and strategic decisions that transformed narrative-driven campaigns into billion-dollar brand outcomes.
The Dr. Squatch breakthrough: when bold creative meets timing
The story starts seven years ago when Dr. Squatch was doing $3 million annually, 100% dependent on Facebook ads. Jack Haldrup, the founder, was creating ads about his personal skin condition journey—niche content for a small audience.
“We need to find a much broader audience if you’re going to grow this brand,” Spitzer told them. “You’ve been doing this for five years. We have to do something different.”
The breakthrough came after four to five months when Haldrup made a crucial decision: “Let’s just go big. Let’s go big.” They created the now-famous three-minute Dr. Squatch commercial featuring James Schrader, who they discovered at a bachelor party after he’d won “San Diego’s funniest person.”
“I remember looking at that edit, and I was like, it was one of the scariest moments of my life,” Spitzer admitted. “Because I was like, well, this doesn’t work. I don’t know if advertising is for me, because this is awesome.”
That first campaign scaled to 20 million views on Meta, then exploded to hundreds of millions on YouTube when another brand suggested they test the platform. The subsequent campaigns grew the company by hundreds of millions in revenue.
Hit rates in creative: it’s baseball, not basketball
When asked about success rates, Spitzer offered a refreshingly honest perspective: “It is like Major League Baseball where it’s like, our home run rate is higher than everybody else’s, but it’s not like, all of a sudden, you’re perfect and everything’s gonna go right.”
He’s been genuinely surprised by creative failures only two or three times in his career. More often, campaigns he rates as “seven or eight out of 10” end up driving tens of millions in sales because “sometimes we’re just not the core demo.”
The $50 million threshold and platform diversification
Spitzer observed a critical inflection point for growing brands: “Most of the brands that we’re meeting that are ideal have figured out, if meta is having a bad day, my business doesn’t work. That’s not a good place to be.”
He explained that while 17% of commerce happens online, brands scaling past $50 million typically need secondary channels. “Television, connected television, YouTube—there’s not really a lot of other places to drive sticky awareness that then gets people to buy in real time, but also allows you to win at retail.”
This thinking shaped Raindrop’s focus on narrative-driven creative that works across multiple channels, not just performance marketing optimized for Meta.
Performance organic: the middle ground solution
Raindrop offers what they call “performance organic”—concepted UGC-style content shot on iPhones but strategically designed to convert. “There’s always like, a cheaper way to do everything,” Spitzer noted. “Performance organic is like 30 videos for 30 grand, fully VO.”
But it’s typically an add-on to broader campaign work, not a standalone service. “We typically wouldn’t do performance organic for people as like a standalone thing. It’s usually part of a broader ecosystem.”
Investment philosophy: selling more than products
Spitzer’s approach to brand investments reflects deeper thinking about consumer psychology. With Dr. Squatch: “We’re not selling soap. If you want to buy 15, 20 bars from Costco, you can get it for like 20 bucks. We’re selling something more—a sense of self expression, joy.”
This philosophy guided investments in Laundry Sauce (“a chore that we’re turning into self care”) and Grooms (“snackable, packable wellness”), where he was an early investor before their recent $500 million valuation.
AI and the creative future: tools, not replacements
On AI in creative work, Spitzer took a measured stance: “I think AI is a powerful tool, and I think it’s one that for brands can be wielded very positively to up level work in a big way.”
He’s excited about using AI for VFX and world-building but cautioned against overuse: “Nothing repulses people more than AI saying, I understand you. People get real weirded out when they feel like they’re on the outside of the inside joke.”
Planning ahead: the DTC timing problem
One recurring frustration for Spitzer is short-term planning in DTC. “Yesterday was when you should get started for q4. The number of calls I get in August, September, like, hey, we need it done by November 7. And I’m like, yeah, no, we’ll see you next year.”
His ideal timeline is four to five months for campaign development, reflecting the thorough process from concept to execution that has made Raindrop’s work so effective.
The bigger picture: brand building vs. performance marketing
Throughout the conversation, Spitzer emphasized that UGC and static images “will never create a DR Squatch like outcome. They’ll never create a grooms like outcome. They sell products. They pay the bills. But they will never create that next level.”
For brands serious about building lasting value, narrative-driven campaigns remain essential. As Spitzer put it: “You need to have great meta creative, but that next level is always, almost always narrative driven.”
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