To Bake It or Fake It

By Jonathan Ford

Sun protection lotions are a necessary — not an impulse — purchase. Traditionally, sun care brand owners have enjoyed a lucrative 3-4 month window of opportunity and, more recently, a better year-round uptake with increased air travel.

But are brand owners rolling out virtually the same products in the same format year after year? Is the brand owner really doing enough to keep today’s consumer interested and loyal? Or, is the sun care market under threat from more forward-thinking brand owners who are muscling in on what was once the holiday beauty brand’s domain? It is time for brand owners to create and develop more relevant and successful sun care brands for the future.

Here’s To Your Health

Today’s consumers are more health conscious and we would anticipate that this makes for greater purchasing of sun care products. But what really determines our choice and buying motivation? Do we understand and opt for the SPF and UVA/UVB information? Do we associate a certain brand name with the best in sun care? Do we look for our usual beauty brand and buy their sun cream variant? What about the design? Maybe, in reality, it comes down to a question of color preference. The sun cream sector tends to form a wall of bright blue, orange, brown and white but, by and large, the structure, the size, the copy remain largely undersigned.

We appreciate that these are functional products but quite often the function is clumsily conveyed through SPF number, color and stock graphics. Is this going to maintain interest for an increasingly sophisticated beauty-buying consumer who is also allowing emotion to govern the purchasing decision of functional products?

Are there any sun care brands actively trying to create and promote a point of difference? Price points may come into play but I think that they are fairly insignificant when balancing cost versus health. Some consumers will always opt for the budget brands while other consumers will buy the premium brand of choice.

As with marketing and branding in general, beauty consumers are moving away from the mass approach and looking for something a little bit different and more individual. These nuances, however, become irrelevant if they are not clearly communicated through design.

Institut Esthederm is a pertinent example. One of France’s fastest growing sun care lines, Institut Esthederm claims to correct the skin by stimulating the production of melanin. However the sun trainer indication and the brand name are in very small type and the focus is again on color with traditional orange packaging and two small sun symbols. A scientific and unique product benefit but, again, in terms of the design there is very little to distinguish it from any one of ten other sun care brands.

In so many sectors, packaging communicates what a brand’s message is and it leads all marketing communication. This is happening across many beauty brands, but not in sun care. We are bombarded with print, television and billboard advertising portraying a glamorous beach lifestyle. While the efficacy of the product is not in doubt, the majority of the packaging design occuring within this sector does little to give us anything extra in terms of a premium, inspirational or more individual offering.

This is the one time of the year, maybe more than any other, when we want to look good and when design and outer appearance should become important to us. It is the optimum time for products to really tune into what makes us tick and look at ways to seduce us. Some challenger brands, perhaps realizing how static this market has become, have bravely attempted to break the mold.

Blockhead is one brand that disrupts category design conventions. First, because it is black and structurally different, it does not look like a typical sun cream product. The smaller and square structure with rounded shoulders is tactile and easily fits in the hand and pocket. Blockhead makes clever use of all design elements with the SPF number written large and centered. It almost becomes the branding or a more subversive and sophisticated message for “those in the know” rather than just an SPF number. It stands out and delivers a clear protection benefit, and therefore will appeal to the more adventurous vacationer, male or female.

Similarly, new at Sephora is Super-Stars Super Soothing After Sun Gel which looks like a normal skin care product and uses black copy on a white background. The copy covers the whole body of the bottle, educating and promoting the product benefit with a repetition of the face and body indication interspersed with listings of the natural product ingredients such as macadamia nut and aloe leaf juice.

Fake It

What about fake tanning? Fake tanning products have enjoyed considerable success — from the launch of the St. Tropez Tanning Essentials system to the more fun and lighthearted Fake Bake brand.

This summer, Fake Bake has brought out its new Fake Bake The Face, which not only marries product and packaging but also manages to balance function and seduction in a tongue-in-cheek way. An eye is positioned in the middle of the bottle to show that this product is for the face and the eye-to-eye contact maximizes an emotional and personal draw. This product is not just for use before we expose our skin to the sun but can be used all year round, as part of an ongoing regime, and looks as good on our bathroom shelves as it does in our beach bag.

Safe Tan, Fake Tan, No Tan

The sun care sector is facing an identity crisis of sorts. The truth, perhaps, is that we don’t want to be brown at all. We are fast moving towards a redefinition of beauty a’ la 1920s Coco Chanel, which is based on a pale, English Rose perception of beauty. So do the traditional sun care brands just throw in the (beach) towel now? Or could they, perhaps, use design to establish, communicate and reinforce a new “protect to be pale” rather than “protect to safe tan” message? Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another year to see what they come up with.  

About the Author
Jonathan Ford is an award-winning designer and creative partner for Pearlfisher —  a London and New York design consultancy. Pearlfisher’s award winning work in the food, drink and luxury markets includes clients such as LVMH, ABSOLUT Vodka and Unilever More information: [email protected].