Objective

Vacation did not have a broken brand. It had the opposite problem: a distinctive identity, a strong creative world, and years of consistency behind it. By the end of 2025, the brand was sold nationally through Ulta, Target, Costco, and CVS and was describing itself as the fastest-growing sunscreen in America. But 2026 brought a massive revenue target, and marketing needed to carry most of the growth burden. The assignment was to build a communications architecture that could support aggressive revenue growth without diluting the brand that made Vacation valuable in the first place.

Strategy

The strategic move was to scale Vacation without sanding off what makes it Vacation. The work identified where awareness and equity gaps were largest, which audiences represented the clearest growth opportunity beyond the existing core customer, and which buying moments gave the brand the most leverage. The resulting architecture connected each of those opportunities to a role for communications, channel and tactic recommendations, and product focus. The plan was designed to ladder directly into tactical planning, budgets, and calendars.

Results

The 2026 plan supported a significant increase in Vacation's marketing investment and a meaningful shift in channel mix, including the brand's first major use of video, television advertising, and social video. Vacation moved from a smaller, more static communications model to a broader, more reach-oriented plan built for the next stage of growth. It is too early to claim sales or awareness impact, but the structural shift is already observable.