Downy has been teasing us with a series of social spots featuring a celebrity who won’t unveil his identity until he proves that Downy Unstopables scents last up to 12 weeks. Now, the celebrity is convinced of the validity of the claim, and he pulls down the sweatshirt he’s had over his head to reveal… Downy McBride.

The name is a play on the actor and Righteous Gemstones star Danny McBride, who is all in as the new character for Downy’s first Big Game ad in 11 years. A 30-second ad will air during the second quarter to feature a motorcycle-riding McBride distributing Unstopables to people via a tee shirt cannon and other brash methods. The spot ends with McBride getting clobbered by a tree, but he remains undeterred in his message of touting Unstopables.

The campaign was created with P&G’s multi-agency collective Woven Collaborative, made up of executives from Marina Maher Communications and Saatchi & Saatchi. Saatchi & Saatchi was behind the brilliant “It’s a Tide Ad” from 2018.

This year’s Downy campaign is notable in that it utilized a maximum amount of time and consumer intrigue to finally unveil its celebrity. Downy enlisted a famous skeptic to “Sniff it to Believe it” by putting the brand’s 12-week freshness claim to the test. The skeptic only agreed to appear in the commercial if Downy could live up to the multi-week freshness claim.

Once the star was convinced, after spots that showed the draped mystery star getting a visit from his Nana, getting his Unstopables stolen from his laundry room and a pizza delivered, he pulled on the sweatshirt and made the transformation into Downy McBride.

As you may have seen, our skeptic star has remained a mystery these past few weeks, challenging Downy’s claim in a number of ad teasers as the Super Bowl approaches. Guess what? It held up to the claim, and Danny McBride decided to reveal himself as that mystery sniffer in the Downy Super Bowl commercial. 

Jenny Maxwell, P&G’s senior brand director of North America fabric care, called the Unstopables campaign “really crazy” because the brand is poking fun at itself, as the previously mysterious celebrity questioning the brand’s freshness claim.

“To be able to bring fun new ways of to get consumers to engage in the skepticism to have it, it’s a different angle. But the only way to do that is bringing a fun new twist on the claims, fun, new interactions. What you’re also going to see is the reveal of who the celebrity is, so we’re keeping people engaged in different ways, but you have to have these twists and turns to keep the consumer wanting to follow the journey with you,” Maxwell told Adweek.

The Downy Unstopables product was introduced 11 years ago, the last time the brand was in the Super Bowl, and it was a recreation of the classic 1980 Coca-Cola spot “Hey Kid, Catch” starring Mean Joe Greene, but with a laundry twist.