Hero — the No.1-selling pimple patches brand, according to Circana — has had a year of firsts.
Its latest will kick off this weekend: a two-day, holiday-themed pop-up dubbed Hero Holiday Workshop in New York City’s Meatpacking District. It will be open to the public on Saturday and Sunday. It’s the 8-year-old brand’s first-ever pop-up.
Though pimples are not typically affiliated with holiday gifts, Hero’s pop-up will be imbued with the holiday spirit. And nothing will be for sale; everything will be free. The brand aims to attract at least 1,500 guests throughout the weekend and hopes the pop-up will advance its larger goals of community building and consumer engagement.
When guests enter, they will be met with a conveyor belt where they can pick up a blind box, inspired by one of the year’s biggest trends: Labubus. Inside each blind box, guests will receive a full-size Hero product, a discount code for future Hero purchases on Amazon and a card telling them a $5 donation has been made to either the Crisis Text Line or Meals On Wheels, in honor of their attendance. Incorporating a giveback element, particularly during the holiday season, was a priority for the brand, said Hayley Podell, Hero’s head of influencer marketing.
After the conveyor belts, guests will get to the brand’s life-size, Hero-themed snow globe featuring a New York skyline backdrop. “They’ll be able to physically get inside of it and take a photo,” Podell said. Next up, guests will encounter a merch booth, where everything is free and exclusive to this pop-up. The free merch includes crewneck sweatshirts, makeup pouches, hats and charms. After that, guests can “ring for a treat,” ringing a stuffed Hero box to receive a gingerbread cookie (with a breakout).
To promote the pop-up, the brand has tapped a number of beauty influencers as well as accounts that talk about NYC goings-on. They include @nyc_forfree (677,000 Instagram followers), @trendmood1 (1.8 million Instagram followers) and Katie Fang (1 million Instagram followers). On Friday, it will host a VIP preview. New York City is the brand’s home; the tri-state area is its largest market, but Podell hopes to activate in Miami or Los Angeles next year. These are the brand’s next two densest consumer areas, and both are also home to large influencer populations.
“This was a year full of firsts for us, so it felt like the right time to test the waters with our first-ever large-scale consumer activation,” Podell said.
This year was also the first time the brand hosted a Coachella house, in partnership with the creator Taylor King (109,000 Instagram followers); its first influencer brand trip, in Cabo; as well as its first consumer brand trip, in Los Angeles. It also held its first launch event for a new product and sent out its first consumer mailer.
Also this year, Hero tapped Olympian Jordan Chiles as its latest celebrity ambassador. And though it had run OOH ads before, it decided to make its largest investment ever in the channel when it learned that Chiles would be competing in the 34th season of “Dancing With The Stars,” which premiered in September. It placed advertisements in 20 locations across five cities — Los Angeles, New York City, Minneapolis, Chicago and Bentonville, Arkansas — a mix of priority markets and retailer homes.
It is, to some extent, a leap of faith for a brand to expect its community members to show up IRL, or to apply to attend a brand trip, Podell said, but she felt confident in the relationship Hero has built with its community based on the “thousands of TikTok videos we’re tagged in every week, the word of mouth, the reviews.”
“We also have something called Skin Squad, which is our [e-commerce site] community that has over 20,000 members,” she said.
While the brand leaned deep into influencer marketing in 2025, it also focused on showing appreciation for its consumers, said Remy Klein, avp of skin care and specialty hair care at Church & Dwight, Hero’s parent company. “Community has been at the center of every decision we’ve made — really understanding the community, listening to the community, making sure all of our innovation is delivering on what the community wants [and providing] high-quality products for all of their acne needs.”
Throughout the year, from one event or activation to the next, the brand has been operating on a test-and-learn basis, Podell said. For example, in March, it held an event for 300 influencers and members of the press that featured a human-scale claw machine. Seeing its success helped the brand feel more confident in its ability to achieve success with its soon-to-open pop-up. “Now, we’re ready to blow this out of the water with consumers,” Podell said.
Though it is too soon to talk about Hero’s 2026 plans, Klein said community will continue to be a priority. “[We’re thinking about] ways to include the community in all aspects of the brand, from informing our innovation to being included in marketing.”
Week in review
Collabs of the week
The Millennial Decorator x Reformation
The Millennial Decorator, aka Julia Rabinowitsch — whose vintage shoe sales and help re-popularizing the flat lay have been featured on Glossy Pop — has teamed with Reformation to create an original shoe of her own.
“This is the first major collaboration for TMD and also the first heel I’ve ever designed,” Rabinowitsch said. “Designing the Julia Tassel Pump meant distilling years of sourcing into one silhouette, a blend of every vintage detail I’ve ever loved. Together, we created a shoe that is both rooted in vintage style and made to wear right now.”
Lauren Caris Cohan, Reformation’s chief creative officer, said, “Julia’s sourcing expertise helped us design a shoe that strikes the right balance between past and present, which is exactly what our customers gravitate toward. The proof, as always, is in the sales — we’ve already placed a recut less than 24 hours post-launch.” The Julia pump is $298 and available in black satin, tan “haircalf” and ruby croc.
At Present x Charlotte Groeneveld (aka @thefashionguitar)
At Present, the online jewelry marketplace, has teamed with Charlotte Groenevald (@thefashionguitar; 584,000 Instagram followers) on a five-piece jewelry collection. It is the third time At Present has partnered with a creator on a capsule collection — prior collaborators include Jalil Johnson and Blake Rayfield.
“We first met Charlotte during a brand trip we hosted upstate,” said Marc Bridge, At Present’s founder and CEO. “We want to build experiences around the people and brands we admire and continue becoming the place people go when they want something special.”
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