For Pattern Beauty’s first-ever TV commercial, Tracee Ellis Ross is turning mixology into hairology.
In the spot, the hair care brand’s founder and co-chief executive is situated behind a sleek bar, serving up “Thirst Trap” cocktails alongside “Coiltinis,” “Gel & Tonics” and “Slick N Slides,” and is joined by her “Girlfriends” co-stars Golden Brooks, Jill Marie Jones and Persia White, on the show’s 25th anniversary. In the glass, instead of actual beverages, there are bottles of Pattern Beauty hair products — each one fit for the bar patrons’ hair types.
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The ad is peppered with plays on the theme. While crossing the bar, for instance, Brooks falls to the ground because her “curls fell.” Jones replies, “you’re supposed to slay the house down, not lay down!” while Ross comes to the rescue with the brand’s curling iron. The advertisement ends with White snatching up several “cocktails” and saying, “Don’t worry, I’m not driving.”
The creative approach was driven by what Ross is known for in Hollywood — her ability to make people laugh.
“Comedy is a huge part of my career, and I really wanted to merge this into Pattern, and we haven’t really done it,” she said. “Traditionally, comedy is not the platform for hair care. It’s not normally together, but yet it’s very me.”
The ad, which will run across both streaming and network television, including Roku, Disney+, Hulu and Paramount+, is a major marketing milestone for the brand. Ross told The Business of Beauty that now — six years after launch — felt like the right moment to launch a broader awareness campaign that spoke to Pattern’s full range, from curl gel and leave-in conditioner to tools like the curling iron.
“The consumer is aware of the brand, but doesn’t always know everything about what we offer, or they think the brand is ‘not mine,’” she said. “We were surprised with how many people actually didn’t understand the real offering of the brand.”
Plus, Pattern has seen positive momentum, particularly over the last year, with retail sales growing 25 percent year-to-date and brand awareness increasing by 4 percent between the end of 2023 and beginning of 2025. Much of those increases were aided by a boost in influencer marketing outreach efforts, with the brand nearly tripling the number of creators in its community through partnerships, events and seeding. It also targeted a wider audience that was newer to the brand with its paid social media marketing efforts.
For this campaign, the brand leaned into both connected (streaming) and linear (cable and network) TV.
“We know that our target customer and audience is watching streaming networks, like everybody,” said Ross. “But there’s a linear network mix that is based on that. So our audience and customer does index high in linear networks as well.”
There are also opportunities for shoppability. Alongside the commercial, Ross also has a new series, “Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross,” that will be premiering on Roku later this summer, in which she’ll be cocktailing hair products that will be shoppable from the show and commercial using the Roku remote.
“It’s a really emerging space that just feels like a given, the same way that TikTok is doing it,” said Ross. “I remember when we started on ‘Girlfriends,’ brand placement was such a thing, and it’s merged in a very organic way now.”
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