Hawaiian Tropic advertising, good or bad?
With the help of the agency Grey, in Stockholm, Hawaiian Tropic sunscreen have been producing some interesting magazine ads recently.
The double page spread above (courtesy of Ivan at Ads of the World) is supposed to reflect the ‘before and after’ of using the Hawaiian Tropic sunscreen – you’re pink before and brown afterwards (obviously targetted at caucasian Westerners). The strapline reads, “ENJOY THE SUN.” Having known what the product was before viewing the ad, it understood the thinking. However, I can imagine it being confusing for readers who don’t know this particular brand / bottle.
One person suggested that the addition of textures to the paper might help, and goes on to believe it doesn’t work due to the approximation of tone. For me, this could easily be an advert for ice cream syrup / sauce – the bottle design resembles a treacle-like syrup container and the colours resemble strawberry and chocolate ice cream. Could this be subliminal to help you “enjoy the sun”? I doubt it.
Hawaiian Tropic have launched a new look to their packaging which I believe will help. Just not enough to save this ad however.
This older, more expensive magazine advertisement (which you might’ve seen here previously) is much more intriguing for me. How many print ads inside a magazine do you intentionally look at more than once? I’d not look at this one over and over, but then it’s not targetted at me.
I think there’s very little idea in the first example and very nice originality in the second.
Do you think these ads work?
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12 appreciated comments on “Hawaiian Tropic advertising, good or bad?”
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Kinda cool I guess but, not sure if they’ll boost sales. It’ll make people talk though for sure. I haven’t seen any of those ads, but if I did I’d be like, “What’s this? Oh.” *turn page*
Just to let you know, I nominated you for a Blogger’s Choice Award! Also, this mirror page thing is pretty creative… it is just the kind of thing in a magazine that would annoy me… If I was outside, I would burn myself, and if I would inside, I would have to look at myself… Talk about lose, lose…
Damn my typos…
Hi David
I have never heard of Hawaiian Tropic and had no idea what it was but the meaning was pretty apparent.
For what it’s worth I think both ads are clever. Even more than that, after looking at the ad I wanted to know more about the product. So it worked pretty nicely on me….
That was meant to read
“after looking at the first ad”
This “Strawberry & Chocolate” idea of Hawaiian Tropic is indeed clever and creative. So much so that it would work only if (a) the line “Enjoy the sun” is present, and (b) the bottle must distinctively shows people that it is a suntan lotion. Failing which, the message would be lost to people who don’t bother to take a closer look, don’t know the brand or don’t recognize the bottle. When that happens, no sales is made. The ultimate bottomline of an ad is to sell products and make money.
Also, can this ad create a distinct brand differentiation from other suntan lotion products? Can this ad actually convert non customers to customers? Can this ad aid a recall when the customer went out of suntan lotion?
For me – a non-user who is new to the brand – this ad doesn’t tick. It doesn’t “wow” me to such an extent that I would buy with emotion and justify with reason. It fails to offer me an excuse or reason to get interested, be curious and take action to find out and buy.
Don’t worry about the typos. It must be this post.
Interesting comments. I’m always glad to receive some difference of opinion because it helps me take a new perspective on things.
In this case I still stand by my original thoughts. The first ad is lacking any real idea and the second is nicely original (albeit very expensive to print).
Would they make me buy the product? No, but then it’s not targetted at my demographic. In fact, the idea of sitting in the sun and purposely exposing yourself to harmful rays isn’t something I’m in favour of at all.
The advertisement is effective for one reason, its full page.
When you hold the magazine your fingers will be covering where the color is. That is where you can tell the difference in the tan on your hand and the one on the book. If the color wasn’t full page then you couldn’t get the big picture.
Some people may even put up their arms on each page to make full comparison.
I think its pretty effective because it can get the reader to physically do something with the ad.
First of all…thanks for the link love David! I just saw it in my WordPress Dashboard.
The ads are clever, especially the double-truck (lingo used at AT&T) mirror ad. It is definitely a memorable campaign and that is what branding is all about, literally branding your company’s image into the consumer’s mind. Or, in this case, branding the consumer’s face with the sun. :)
I definitely like the second ad better. Maybe it’s just how it looks on my monitor, but the strawberry ice cream color puts me more in mind of sunburn than anything else. Of course, since my skin never tans, I’m pretty sensitive about things that look like sunburns.
The first advert you showed with the pink and brown sound reminds me of a radio advert for suntan lotion I read about in a book (Is not How Good You Are It’s How Good You Want To Be). An Englishman’s voice starts talking about all the benefits of the product and then his voice gradually changes to the voice of a West Indian man.
I agree with you about the colours, it does make it look like icecream – nice idea, but I think it could have been made to look better, more natural colours maybe?
I will choose………………..Strawberry In Chocolate! I love Hot Chocolate!
Reminds me of my visit to Hawaii in 1986. 20 over years ago.. I can’t remember anything except for the beach. =)