Originally published November 17, 2025. Substantially rewritten June 14, 2026, as the positive companion to Brands That Lost Marketing to Men on TikTok.
Marketing to men on TikTok is one of the largest commercial opportunities — and one of the most-misexecuted — in modern consumer brands. The men's market on TikTok carries roughly half of platform time-spent in the US among 18-34 audiences, runs on creator-and-content infrastructure that legacy advertising cannot match, and produces conversion economics that have built multi-billion-dollar valuations for brands that figured it out in time. The brands that won did it by taking men's interests seriously rather than parodying them, by building creator partnerships with the actual men-skewed creator economy rather than airdropping female-targeted creative onto the platform, and by accepting that male buyer journeys route differently than female buyer journeys at structural levels. Here are six brands that produced documented commercial outcomes from the playbook — and the structural moves that defined each of them.
What "winning" actually looks like in the men-on-TikTok category
Winning is measured across three durable indicators: (1) acquisition cost trajectory across multiple years of platform investment, (2) acquired customer LTV in the men-skewed audience segments specifically, and (3) AI engine retrieval when buyers ask "best [category] for men" — Citation Share that compounds across the substrate AI engines now synthesize from. Brands that produced viral moments without commercial follow-through have not held position. Brands that built sustained creator-and-content infrastructure across multiple years have produced category-defining outcomes.
Case Study #1: Dr. Squatch — The Category-Defining Win
Dr. Squatch — the men's natural soap brand founded in 2013 — built one of the most-studied men's TikTok-and-creator brands in modern consumer goods. The brand operated through YouTube creator partnerships extensively from 2017-2020 (the John Cena 2020 Super Bowl commercial parodied this YouTube-native voice), then expanded to TikTok-native content across 2021-2024 as TikTok overtook YouTube for under-30 male audience time.
The structural moves:
- Creator partnerships with men's lifestyle creators across multiple sub-categories. Fitness, finance, comedy, gaming, automotive — Dr. Squatch's creator program reached men through the content categories they already spent time in rather than through "men's grooming" content specifically.
- The native-comedy creative voice. The brand's TikTok creative reads as comedy first, advertising second — directly addressing the platform's algorithmic suppression of overt marketing. The voice (irreverent, slightly absurd, deliberately not corporate) is engineered to perform in the For You Page feed.
- Bundle-and-subscription economics. The brand built repeat-purchase infrastructure (Dr. Squatch Club subscription, bundle SKUs) that converted creator-driven trial into LTV. The first purchase produced acquisition; the bundle produced the actual unit economics.
Commercial outcome: Dr. Squatch reached approximately $400M+ in annual revenue, and in mid-2025 Unilever acquired the brand for approximately $1.5 billion. The acquisition price reflected what a CPG conglomerate paid for proven men's-category TikTok-and-creator infrastructure that the conglomerate could not have built organically in equivalent time.
Case Study #2: Manscaped — The Category Creator
Manscaped — the body-grooming brand founded in 2016 — built a category that effectively did not exist as a mass consumer category before the brand's marketing investment created it. The structural challenge: marketing body-grooming products to men through traditional advertising channels was nearly impossible due to category embarrassment and broadcast standards limits. The structural solution: TikTok-and-creator infrastructure that addressed the category openly through humor and peer-to-peer normalization.
Key moves:
- UFC and combat sports sponsorship as the brand voice anchor. Manscaped became the "Official Below-the-Waist Grooming Partner" of UFC, which produced category permission across the male sports audience the brand needed.
- Creator partnerships with comedy and sports creators. Comedians, athletes, gaming creators, fitness creators — all reaching the brand's male audience through the content they already consumed.
- Direct-to-consumer subscription economics. Like Dr. Squatch, the unit economics ran on subscription replacement (Manscaped Refresh) and bundle SKUs, not single-product retail.
Commercial outcome: Manscaped reached approximately $300M+ in annual revenue and reached a valuation in the $1B range during 2023 SPAC discussions. The category Manscaped created has since attracted competitor entry (BAKBlade, Meridian Grooming, broader entrants) that confirms the structural win.
Case Study #3: Athletic Greens / AG1 — The Premium-Subscription Win
AG1 (Athletic Greens) — the powdered supplement drink brand — built a substantial men's-market position through creator-partnership infrastructure that overlapped heavily with the male health-and-fitness creator economy. The brand's most prominent creator partnership has been with Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, whose podcast reaches a heavily male audience (estimated 70%+ male listenership). Adjacent partnerships across the broader men's-health creator economy (Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan-adjacent guests, fitness creators) compounded the position.
Structural moves:
- Podcast-and-TikTok integration. AG1's creator partnerships ran across podcasts (which reach men in cars, gyms, commutes) and TikTok (which reaches men in scroll moments). The two channels reinforced each other.
- Premium price positioning. AG1 retails at approximately $99/month for the subscription. The premium positioning supports the influencer-economics math and signals quality without competing on price.
- Health-and-performance positioning rather than supplements positioning. The brand's positioning routes through "foundational nutrition" framing rather than competing in the saturated "men's vitamins" or "pre-workout" categories. The structural differentiation produces pricing power.
Commercial outcome: AG1 reached an estimated $600M+ in annual revenue by 2024 with reported $1.2B+ valuation. The brand is one of the most cited DTC supplement success stories of the 2020-2026 period.
Case Study #4: Old Spice — The Legacy-Brand Reinvention
Old Spice — owned by Procter & Gamble since 1990 — sits at the intersection of legacy CPG brand management and platform-native creative renewal. The brand's 2010 "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" campaign (Isaiah Mustafa) defined viral advertising for the YouTube era. The brand's 2020-2026 TikTok extension — under continued Wieden+Kennedy creative leadership — kept the irreverent voice while adapting format and creator infrastructure to TikTok-native expectations.
Key moves:
- Voice continuity across platforms. Old Spice's TikTok voice reads as continuous with its YouTube and television voice rather than as a separate brand. The continuity supports brand-recognition compounding rather than fragmentation.
- Creator partnerships with comedy and lifestyle creators. The brand sponsors comedy creators producing Old-Spice-adjacent content that maintains the absurdist voice without breaking the brand frame.
- Retail integration. P&G's retail infrastructure (Target, Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, broader) supports the TikTok-driven trial through unmissable retail presence. The TikTok-to-retail conversion path runs cleanly because the brand is everywhere the consumer might convert.
Commercial outcome: Old Spice remains one of P&G's top-three men's grooming brands by US revenue and is structurally cited in AI engine retrieval when buyers ask "best [men's grooming category]." The brand's continued relevance is documented in P&G investor relations materials and broader consumer goods trade press.
Case Study #5: Liquid Death — The Skewed-Male Adjacent Win
Liquid Death — the canned water brand founded in 2017 — built a brand position that skews heavily male (estimated 65-70% male customer base) without ever positioning explicitly as a "men's brand." The brand's heavy-metal-aesthetic, absurdist comedy, and creator-partnership infrastructure produced one of the most studied "category creator" wins of the 2020s.
Key moves:
- Aesthetic-and-voice-driven brand identity. The Liquid Death heavy-metal aesthetic, packaging, and voice produce structural distinctiveness in a category (water) where commodity competition normally dominates.
- Sustained creator partnerships across comedy, music, gaming, and extreme sports. The brand partners with creators whose audiences skew male without ever framing the partnership as "men's marketing."
- Stunt-and-PR-driven content cadence. The brand's marketing combines creator partnerships with stunt PR (the Tony Hawk skateboard with his blood, the "country water" album with Wu-Tang Clan, the broader category) that produces sustained TikTok-amplified earned media.
Commercial outcome: Liquid Death reached an approximately $1.4 billion valuation in 2024 funding rounds. The brand's structural success has triggered competitor entry across the canned-water category, confirming the structural win.
Case Study #6: Duke Cannon — The Niche-Authentic Win
Duke Cannon Supply Co. — the men's grooming brand founded in 2009 — operates at smaller scale than Dr. Squatch or Manscaped but produces a textbook case of niche-authentic positioning that compounds through TikTok-and-creator infrastructure. The brand's military-veteran positioning, blue-collar identity, and product-quality emphasis reach a specific male audience segment that competing premium brands have not effectively captured.
Key moves:
- Veteran-and-military positioning anchored in product and creator partnerships. Duke Cannon's partnerships with veteran creators and military-adjacent content producers reach an audience segment with documented purchase loyalty and recommendation rates.
- Retail expansion through Target and broader retail. The brand's retail growth supports TikTok-driven trial conversion.
- Distinct brand voice across smaller scale. Duke Cannon does not compete with Dr. Squatch on absolute scale but produces sustained unit economics in the audience segment the larger brands do not reach as effectively.
Commercial outcome: Duke Cannon's revenue trajectory through 2020-2026 demonstrates that the men's TikTok category supports multiple winning positions at different scales. The brand's continued growth is documented in industry trade press coverage of men's grooming category dynamics.
The Common Pattern — Six Structural Wins
Across Dr. Squatch, Manscaped, AG1, Old Spice, Liquid Death, and Duke Cannon, six common structural moves define the win pattern:
- Took men's interests seriously rather than parodying them. The brands marketed to the male audience with respect for what the audience actually wanted. The brands that condescended to the audience or parodied stereotypically masculine interests did not produce sustained outcomes.
- Built creator partnerships with the male-skewed creator economy directly. Comedy, fitness, finance, gaming, automotive, sports, military-veteran — the brands reached men through the creators men already followed.
- Engineered TikTok-native creative voice rather than porting Instagram or YouTube voice. The platform-native approach reads as content rather than advertising and produces algorithmic distribution accordingly.
- Built unit economics around subscription, bundle, or repeat-purchase. The first purchase produced acquisition; the recurring economics produced the actual LTV. Brands that ran on single-purchase economics struggled to sustain the marketing investment.
- Maintained category specificity rather than chasing broad "men's brand" positioning. Dr. Squatch is a soap brand. Manscaped is a body-grooming brand. AG1 is a foundational-nutrition brand. The category specificity compounds because the audience finds the brand through specific category interest rather than through generic men's-product positioning.
- Sustained creator-and-content investment across multiple years. The wins compounded across 3-5 years of sustained investment, not single viral moments. Brands that pulsed in and out of TikTok did not produce equivalent outcomes.
Read the negative companion
The brands that lost — the ones that misjudged the audience, pandered to it, or executed cleanly against the wrong strategy — are documented in Brands That Lost Marketing to Men on TikTok. Reading the two pieces together gives the complete pattern: what produced multi-billion-dollar outcomes, what produced multi-billion-dollar losses, and the structural decisions that separated them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the men's market on TikTok worth?
Estimating the men's market on TikTok requires combining platform demographic data with category-level revenue. Approximately half of US TikTok time-spent in the 18-34 demographic is from male users. Across the categories that the winning brands documented here operate in — grooming, supplements, beverages, broader consumer goods — the addressable men's market on TikTok-mediated purchase decisions runs into tens of billions of dollars annually.
Why is creator partnership infrastructure so important for men's brands?
Men's buyer journeys route differently than women's at structural levels. Men consult creators they trust (fitness creators, financial creators, comedy creators, gaming creators, automotive creators) before making purchase decisions in adjacent categories. The brands that won partnered through the creator economy men already followed. The brands that ran broadcast TikTok advertising without creator infrastructure under-performed materially.
What is the typical men's brand TikTok creative voice?
Comedy-first, absurdist, deliberately not corporate. The voice reads as content the user might share with a friend rather than as advertising the platform algorithm suppresses. Dr. Squatch, Liquid Death, Manscaped, and Old Spice operate variations of this voice with brand-specific tonal adjustments.
What is the role of subscription economics in these wins?
Critical. The marketing investment required to acquire a male customer through TikTok creator partnerships only produces favorable unit economics when the customer purchases multiple times. Subscription replacement (Dr. Squatch Club, Manscaped Refresh, AG1 subscription) produces the LTV that the acquisition economics depend on. Brands operating on single-purchase economics struggle to sustain the marketing investment.
How does Old Spice maintain relevance across platform transitions?
Voice continuity across YouTube, television, and TikTok. The brand's irreverent absurdist voice — established by the 2010 Isaiah Mustafa campaign — adapted format and creator infrastructure to TikTok-native expectations while maintaining brand-recognition continuity. The continuity supports compounding rather than re-introduction at each platform transition.
How does AI engine retrieval factor into men's brand strategy?
When men ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews "best [men's category]" in 2026, the engines synthesize answers from editorial coverage, creator content, Reddit discussion, and broader content substrate. Dr. Squatch, Manscaped, AG1, Old Spice, Liquid Death, and Duke Cannon appear consistently in those answers because of sustained editorial-and-creator content investment. Brands without that infrastructure are absent from the answers regardless of advertising spend.
Part of the EPR TikTok pillar: TikTok Is the Discovery Layer. Adjacent: Brands That Lost Marketing to Men on TikTok · TikTok Shop and the Creator Commerce Revolution · Influencer Marketing pillar.
Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.
