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What the hell is whipped cream doing in the sunscreen section?
That is the question the sunscreen brand Vacation hopes to elicit from customers, their co-founder and Executive Chair of Marketing, Lach Hall, told me recently from a Zoom he took from their headquarters in Miami. Hall exuded a laid-back confidence one would expect from the mind behind a sunscreen brand that has burst onto the scene with clever, category-defying products and a brilliantly conceived brand world.
“It’s weird to see Lach with sleeves on right now,” Vacation’s Head of Design, Roy Fleeman, joked.
“I’ve still got my swim trunks on, though,” said Hall.
The origin of Vacation starts with Hall and his business partner, Dakota Green. The two have been friends and collaborators for years, initially meeting in New York City in 2013 while working in marketing and advertising together. “A few years back, we were freelancing remotely out of Playa del Carmen in Mexico, and, as you can imagine, we spent a lot of time on the beach drinking piña coladas,” said Hall. “One day, we got to talking about sunscreen and why it’s actually so boring given that it’s used in such fun environments.”
Hall and Green couldn’t help themselves and began looking into the history of sunscreen brands. “We found that sunscreen, as an industry, used to be a hell of a lot more fun back in the 50s through the 80s when it was all about tanning,” Hall continued. “But then in the 90s, when the dangers of tanning became apparent, they moved the whole aesthetic, messaging, marketing, and positioning of all of these brands toward being a lot more clinical. So the thought that we had was, Can we make sunscreen fun? People are on board with wanting to protect their skin now; it’s time to have fun again.”
And thus, Vacation Leisure-Enhancing Sunscreen was born. Who says piña coladas can’t be the fuel for creative genius?
Vacation strives to provide highly conceptual, innovative, and fun sunscreen products, exemplified by their Whipped Cream Sunscreen and Chardonnay Sunscreen Oil. They also aim to offer sunscreens with a sensorial focus— “sunscreens that make you look, feel, and smell like you’ve been to paradise and back,” as Hall puts it. But don’t worry, Vacation is by no means sacrificing science for the sake of kitsch; their product formulas offer the best in modern skincare and sun care and do, in fact, effectively protect users from UV rays. “Then we’re coupling all of this with a really immersive, nostalgic brand world,” said Hall. “Just like the product will take you to paradise, we want the whole world to spark joy, no matter what touchpoint people come through.” Much of the success of this world-building can be attributed to Fleeman.
The Atlanta-based Fleeman has been working with Vacation from the start. He was initially brought on in late 2019 while working at his own agency, Office Hours (Montreal’s Wedge and Studio Bombara also had a hand in bringing the brand to life at its inception). “One of the things that really attracted us to Office Hours was their retro and nostalgic restaurant work; their portfolio was just amazing,” said Hall.
As Vacation grew, so did the time Hall and Green spent working with Fleeman as their needs from Office Hours mounted. “Over time, I pestered him day after day to get him to come full-time and leave his agency,” explained Hall of his courting Fleeman. “I don’t know how we convinced him, but we’re very fortunate we did.” It’s been a year since Fleeman made the official move.
Leaving one’s own design agency to work for another brand full-time, in-house, is a giant leap, but Fleeman’s gradual decision to do so speaks to the special sauce of Vacation and the exciting brand they’ve conjured up. “Eventually, it just made sense to come on full-time and in-house, just because of the amount of work,” Fleeman said. “I’d also accomplished and checked off many of the things I wanted to do with my own agency— specific clients, types of work. So it all just made sense and fell in place.”
Ultimately, Fleeman himself couldn’t pass up on paradise.
“The world-building that Lach has established really spoke to me,” he said. “That was something I was doing with the restaurants and brands I was working with; it’s about the whole feeling of what you’re trying to get across to people instead of just the design of the logo, menu, or sign.”
Fleeman said he found himself captivated by working with the Vacation team and the satisfaction of pulling the whole brand together across all its touchpoints. “We’re making these brands within the brand,” Fleeman elaborated. “Lach describes this as ‘Willy Wonka style.’ We’re not just slapping a logo on everything and calling it the new Vacation product. When we start a new product, there’s a whole conceptual process behind it— How does this live within the Vacation world? What is its own world within the Vacation world? That’s what truly excited me. No other brand was doing that. I can’t think of anyone else that treated products like this.” And when you look at the whole suite of Vacation products, they’re all very different offerings. What’s impressive is that they all feel a part of the same world.
Going from the fast pace of agency life to Vacation was seamless for Fleeman, considering that, in some ways, Vacation’s approach is comparable to an agency, with new products and their worlds launching in quick succession. “I get bored easily, and there’s no getting bored at Vacation.”
Hall and Fleeman each bring unique and specific influences with them that have indelibly permeated the core of the Vacation brand. The distinct 80s-Miami feel the branding is infused with can be traced partly to Hall actively living in Miami. Meanwhile, Fleeman’s penchant for retro design aesthetics is partly attributed to his dad being a sign painter.
“Dakota and I have actually always lived in this brand world, and in a way, sunscreen was just the perfect product to bring this whole world that we already had in our minds to life,” said Hall. “I believe that some of the best brands in the world are genuinely just true personifications of their founders—Nike, Patagonia, Liquid Death—and Dakota and I are a combination of la buena vida and Miami Spice. We chase the good life and old 80s leisure items like shrimp cocktails and oysters; I’ve always lived in this 80s Miami world and have been for about 15 years. We weren’t chasing a trend at all with Vacation. We were putting out something really true and honest to who we are.”
Vacation’s retro aesthetic, nailed by Fleeman, comes to him just as authentically. “Going down to my dad’s sign shop and seeing him hand-paint signs, I’ve always tried to bring anything like that into my work. I appreciate a little bit of grit. I like how, in the 80s, if there was a cut-out image on something, someone sat there with scissors, and sometimes you can even see the edge from where they actually cut out that thing. That tactical nature speaks to me, and I think it speaks to many of us in this company. That was probably truly the last decade that that stuff was happening before computers completely took over. We all kind of feel like phonies here in the art department because we’re using Photoshop and cutting things out quickly. The true heroes were the people creating these actual ads in the 80s and hand-setting the type.”
Vacation is dizzyingly prolific, putting out new products at an impressively swift cadence. Five months into 2024, and they’ve already released seven new products: Instant Vacation SPF 30, Orange Gelée, “Vacation” By Vacation® Shimmer Oil SPF 30, Super Stick SPF 45, Studio Tone SPF 50 3-In-1 Bronzing Drops, and Shake Shake SPF 50 Mineral Milk. When asked where their ideas for new products typically come from, Hall shared there’s a formal and an informal process. The structured route comes through identifying a need in the market, wherein one of their retail partners (like Nordstrom or Ulta) will approach them with a trend they’ve identified and then ask them to come up with a product that taps into it with the Vacation spin.
For example, when Vacation decided to come out with their own face mist sunscreen, they began riffing on the idea of wearing it every day, even when going to work at an office. “We started laughing about the concept of an office sunscreen, or what we ended up calling ‘Sunscreen for the Boardroom’ or ‘Corporate Sunscreen,'” said Hall. “So then we developed a whole world around a sunscreen that was built for business.”
“It would be easy just to say, Hey, we’re gonna do a face mist sunscreen, let’s go shoot it at the beach or the pool. But anyone can do that,” added Fleeman. “What’s our weird angle for these things? How do we cut through the noise of other sunscreen brands and stand out with the art direction, and the headlines, and the way we talk about it? It’s always finding that weird, funny thing that we all think is a little humorous and strange but ties into it. ‘Sunscreen for Business’ just helps bring everything all together.”
The more informal way Vacation develops new products is through organic brainstorming, which happens naturally within an office of genuinely creative people. “As you can imagine, we’re a really creative company, and we have a lot of fun,” said Hall. “Our company Slack is just buzzing with fun ideas and people sharing old 80s ads or different product ideas. Every day, there are too many ideas for us ever to make. We have to meet every couple of weeks to cull these ideas down into what should actually go into formal product development.”
Vacation’s flourishing success is a testament to the power of in-house creative teams and the magic that can come about when collaborators work together intimately with an aligned, authentic vision.
“It would be impossible to create brand guidelines for this brand. A lot of it goes by feel,” said Fleeman. “There are so many brands within the brand. It’s kind of terrifying to some people, but I love that. The flexibility of it, but within a group of people who know exactly what it should be, just by the feel. It would be impossible to put it in words. We found a group of people who just get it, and it’s great to work together every day.”
Images © Vacation, Inc. 2023.