Gen Alpha and Gen Z shoppers don’t want to be sold to, according to Tara Loftis, Global President, Dermatological Skincare at Galderma, owner of brands Differin and Cetaphil. So if this age group is a brand’s target market—like it is for Differin—it has to naturally integrate its brand where those shoppers are.
For consumers ages 13 to 24 in 2025, that’s in the gaming world—specifically the metaverse platform Roblox. To meet these shoppers where they are, Differin has three minigames available to play within five of Roblox’s popular games for four weeks in March.
“Showing up in an authentic way where they already are, in a gamified way, shows that we’re just on the journey with them, rather than being a popup banner or being a sponsored ad somewhere,” Loftis said.
Details of the Roblox Marketing Campaign
If consumers complete a minigame they receive a “power-up” or tool to use within the larger game they are playing. The minigames relate to Differin’s products, in which players use a product to fight acne, including the “Zit Zapper, “Power Patch Splat” and “Foam Blaster.” Consumers can win virtual items and receive gaming bonuses if they upload their receipt from a Differin product.
In terms of what would make the campaign a success, the key performance indicators are a lift in brand awareness and an increase in new-to-brand buyers, according to Loftis. The activation will target 70% new shoppers and 30% of its existing customers, and the brand will measure campaign effectiveness via sales at retailers.
Platform distribution is not limited to Roblox, Loftis noted. “There’s also cross-platform activation that’s happening here across Twitch, Reddit, YouTube. We’re not stopping at Roblox. We’re actively engaging and promoting this to create a halo of awareness and momentum.”
Positive Results From Differin’s Roblox Minigames
Within the first week of the campaign, the brand reported more than 400,000 impressions and hundreds of thousands of consumers playing its games. “This is a big bet that we’re placing and we’re kind of shocked that there’s not a lot of beauty brands that have flooded this space yet given how strong the data is,” Loftis said. Results seem so encouraging that Differin is likely going to do another Roblox marketing activation in the second half of 2025.
Loftis is confident that Differin’s market is on Roblox, since roughly two thirds of its customers are Gen Z or Gen Alpha customers, and that group of shoppers spends 2.5 hours on gaming per week, Loftis said. “We know that we want to meet our existing consumer where they are, and we want to win over many millions more, and this is our best bet,” she said.
Why Differin Says Yes to Roblox Now and in the Future
The brand decided to launch a Roblox campaign after a successful marketing campaign on gaming-focused video streaming platform Twitch in 2024. That campaign received hundreds of thousands of views and far exceeded Differin’s expectations.
“Based on that initial win with Twitch, we wanted to set our sights on Roblox and we thought, ‘Let’s not just dip our toe in the water. Let’s go big with this consumer. Let’s explore,’” Loftis said. “I love nothing more than white space, and we are the first acne brand to integrate in this way.”
Between Loftis and her team of two, its marketing agency Dentsu and its developer, about 10 developers worked for three or four months to create the minigames. This was a “big bet” for the brand because it was such an intentional activation, not a small test like the Twitch activation.
“We didn’t want to keep playing in a table stakes kind of way where we’re doing all the same things that our competitors are doing, all the same micro influencer programs, all the same trade marketing with Amazon. We wanted to stand out,” Loftis said.
The Roblox minigames are a “significant” part of Differin’s marketing budget—over 10%—for the first half of 2025, Loftis said, without revealing more. She expects the return on its investment to come in at 10-30%, which is in-line with the ROI for its other advocacy marketing initiatives, such as influencer or user-generated content marketing.
“Although I’ll caveat that with the fact that by building minigames, the spend is a bit higher than it is to send out product gifting or to sponsor micro-influencer posts,” Loftis said. “So without being able to be specific about our return on ad spend targets here, I think we will be looking at something that we’re quite happy with.”
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