10 Ideas: Ways to make sunscreen sexy

A practical challenge with wide scope — Thinking about both the product and the marketing, the idea is to dramatically increase sunscreen compliance.

This post is a collection of responses from the weekly 10 ideas email. If you’d like to be more creative every week, you can sign up to receive the email here.

SOME OF MY FAVOURITE RESPONSES THIS WEEK:

• Existing sunscreen brands could link with sunglass brands. Sunnies are cool.
• Put sun protection ingredients into the water like Australian government did with fluoride for teeth — ingredients need to be ingestible and cannot be wiped off by a towel
• Infuse sunscreen with the water humidifier droplets that sprays you when you walk in and out of public buildings or private ones (eg. malls)
• Incentives to reduce to your health premiums, having a yearly check up and doctors are able to know that you have been regularly wearing sunscreen
• Sunscreen as an instagram influencer product. Drop-shipping where sunscreen can be branded as the influencers brand and then shipped to followers who pay. It’s an easy product for influencers to launch their own (in the same way vitamins and supplements are all the rage in this community)
• Put sun protection ingredients into the water like Australian government did with fluoride for teeth — ingredients need to be ingestible and cannot be wiped off by a towel

THE FULL LIST

BRAND ALIGNMENT

• Existing sunscreen brands could link with sunglass brands. Sunnies are cool.
• Sunscreen high end creams applied exclusively in beauty spas. Expensive, smell amazing, make it a desired product.
• Beats makes suncreen and puts it in every music video to make it cool to young people
• A major marketing campaign that ties bikini fashion parades to sunscreen. You clearly get told which bikini and which brand of sunscreen the model is wearing.
• Have all the major sports brands release sunscreen. What would Nike sunscreen look like?

DISPENSERS

• Infuse sunscreen with the water humidifier droplets that sprays you when you walk in and out of public buildings or private ones (eg. malls)
• Suncreen dispensers in all locations (like hand sanitisers)
• A face towel that has a compartment to insert sunscreen and overtime you wipe you face you get sunscreen

EVENT/ LOCATION ALIGNMENT

• Freebies at music festivals, running festivals or any outdoor event with lots of attendess to increase brand awareness.
  Increase sunscreen use in children — sponsor school fairs & sporting events.
• Get free entry into certain places if you wear sunscreen (outdoor places like swimming pools, theme parks)

PRODUCT INNOVATION — VISUAL

• A sunscreen that turns red as soon as your skin is starting to burn. So you get a visual cue as soon as you’ve been out in the sun for too long. It might not be very sexy but parents would buy it by the bucketload.
• Glows/indicates compliancy with protection levels

PRODUCT INNOVATION — BEAUTY

• Sunscreen tanning mouse — fake tan with sunscreen protection.
• Sunscreen anti-wrinkle cream to attract an older segment of the population.
  Includes automatic tanning agent
• Tan and protection in one product
• A toning sunscreen that visibly tightens cellulite. Tie into weight loss.

PRODUCT INNOVATION — FRAGRANCES

• Adding fragrances — i.e. Sunscreen with Chloe
• Have use specific sunscreen that’s infused with certain smells. So you can have a golf specific sunscreen that has a very specific smell for the golf course. People know you have it on because the smell is so distinctive
• Rely heavily on Fragrance — launch a line of sunscreens that are infused with the fragrance of famous beaches all over the world. So you might have Rio, or Nice, or Tahiti. All of which have a very distinctive fragrance.
• Sunscreen perfumed spray.

PRODUCT INNOVATION — ADDED BENEFITS

• Protects from insect bites as well
• Sports enhanced sunscreen — it helps the performance of your muscles on a long run or ride. Perhaps it’s enhanced with things like deep heat.
• Vitamin enhanced sunscreen, that gives you your daily dose of vitamins delivered through the skin
• Sunscreen that has ingredients thats give you energy
• Hair-gel that can act as sun protection for the entire body when you apply it
• Waterproof sunscreen infused with shampoo so when you shower in the mornings you don’t have to worry about putting it on

PRODUCT INNOVATION — OTHER

• Ultra light weight sunscreens.
• Semi-permanent sprays that last for a week. Perfect before your next beach holiday.
• Once off skin cancer prevention dose included
• One treatment lasts all summer
• What would Apple sunscreen look like? I think it would be an ingestible tablet, that slowly releases protective ingredients over the course of a month, so you’re protected.

MARKETING

• Maybe you need to make sunscreen a major status symbol. You can do that by upping the price. What about a sunscreen that tinges your skin a certain colour (only visible under polarised sunglasses). The sunscreen is worth $200 bottle, so it’s a real symbol of affluence.
• Make skin cancer real & scarier — probably the role of the government & health departments to campaign.
• Look sexy and healthy
• Get the sun’s benefits with total health confidence
• A magazine campaign that profiles mainstream models and their favourite brand of sunscreen
• Changing nothing but upping the price 10x. There will be some people who will think it’s sexy just because the price signal is high enough.

CHARITY

• Sponsors skin cancer eradication
• Buy one and save a life

CAN’T AVOID

• Put sun protection ingredients into the water like Australian government did with fluoride for teeth — ingredients need to be ingestible and cannot be wiped off by a towel

FINANCIAL INCENTIVES

• Incentives to reduce to your health premiums, having a yearly check up and doctors are able to know that you have been regularly wearing sunscreen

This post is a collection of responses from the weekly 10 ideas email. If you’d like to be more creative every week, you can sign up to receive the email here.