Dr. Squatch just hid a million dollars across four countries and dared its most obsessive fan base to go find it.
The natural personal care brand launched "SPEEDRUN: Million Dollar Mission" with IShowSpeed.
Rolling Stone named the 21-year-old streamer the world's most influential creator in 2025.
The prize pool doubles as the media buy.
Dr. Squatch is paying its own audience for nine weeks of footage, and pointing that audience at 4,000 Walmart doors and a TikTok Shop while they hunt.
The mission runs from August 31 through October 31 across 25 challenges in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia.
Fans hunt, film, and shop their way toward a $1 million prize pool.
John Ludeke, Dr. Squatch's chief brand officer, describes the mission as a game that pulls fans off the sidelines.
"We could have launched a traditional ad campaign with Speed," he said in a press release.
"Instead, we decided to hide a million dollars and ask fans around the world to see if they could find it."
IShowSpeed backed that sentiment himself.
"I've done a lot of crazy things, but Dr. Squatch putting a million dollars out there for my community to find is on another level," he shared.
Speed also says he plans to hunt for a briefcase himself.
It keeps him inside the campaign for all nine weeks and gives Dr. Squatch a reason to post about him every week.
This kind of setup hands the brand a steady feed of influencer marketing content where Speed shows up as a player with something to win.
Where the Hunt Begins
Fans can chase the money three ways.
Weekly "briefcase hunts" hide gold-bar soap bricks worth up to $50,000 in cities across all four countries.
The location clues drop as each hunt unfolds.
Content missions modeled on Speed's own stunts, like challenging a stranger to a footrace, ask fans to post their attempt with the hashtag #MillionDollarMission.
A TikTok Shop tie-in adds 25 more $10,000 winning scratchers, available through marked Loot Box Bundles or free by request at SpeedrunMDM.com.
The run ends with a single $250,000 grand finale, with details still to come.
Walmart stores and other retail partners double as checkpoints, with in-store displays and QR codes linking shoppers to the live leaderboard and weekly challenge list.
Creative agency Applied MSCHF developed the mission, continuing Dr. Squatch's habit of handing fans something to do with the brand.
And Dr. Squatch isn't the only brand chasing a piece of Speed's audience.
KFC recently launched a menu item and a 60-second spot around the streamer's years of unpaid restaurant visits, targeting his existing fan community.
Both deals follow the same celebrity marketing logic, where a creator's existing habits double as the creative brief.
Fans already watched Speed race strangers on a street and bark at cameras for free, so the paid version reads as more of the same authentic content.
The Prize Is the Pitch
Dr. Squatch is chasing a demand that has been growing for years.
Young audiences want a campaign they can actually participate in.
Deloitte's March 2026 Digital Media Trends tracking found that 52% of Gen Z feel closer to social media creators than to TV actors and personalities.
Meanwhile, an Attest survey found that 46% of young adults actively take part in polls, quizzes, and other interactive content.
It's a habit that carries over from gaming into what they expect from brands.
And Dr. Squatch is meeting both numbers at once, borrowing Speed's audience and giving them 25 challenges to enter.
Here are three ways that other brands can apply the same thinking:
- Split the payout across formats: Briefcase hunts, content missions, and a Shop tie-in each give a different kind of fan an entry point, instead of funneling everyone toward one channel.
- Build in a reason to keep checking back: A nine-week run and a $250,000 finale keep the story alive well past a single launch week.
- Turn the store into a checkpoint: QR codes at 4,000 Walmart locations connect a purely digital hunt back to a physical purchase.
A prize pool spread this wide asks for a lot of marketing budget, and it buys nine weeks of a fan base doing the talking that a media plan alone can't manage.
Our Take: What's Really for Sale Here?
Most of the fans running around city blocks this fall won't find a briefcase.
But somebody eventually will. Hope is the product, and the soap is just what shows up in the mail after.
We've watched brands chase creators for a decade now, and we'd argue that few have let the reward be this uneven and this dependent on luck.
Dr. Squatch is counting on weeks of searching, filming, and posting being worth more to the brand than a guaranteed discount ever could be.
That's a real risk for a soap company, and we mean it as a compliment.
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