Moves
- Flip the category’s emotional code
- Run the brand like a franchise
- Marketing moves into the product brief
2026 rank
Vacation, rank 12
- Rival 50 Score
- 3.88
- Differentiation
- 4.7
- Relevance
- 4.0
- Talkability
- 3.72
Growth signalReported to be profitable, with sales projected to double to about $80 million.
Vacation sells sunscreen as a summer you never had. The test for a brand built on the past is whether it can create something worth remembering.
Sunscreen has always been sold as protection from danger: sun damage, premature aging, the dermatologist’s slideshow. It’s a product people use because they should, not because they want to. Vacation decided sunscreen should feel like a day off.
Launched in 2021, the brand wrapped SPF in an idealized 1980s summer: poolside nostalgia, retro packaging and a scent so good that putting it on became the point. Then it went further than any packaging exercise. It invented a fictional 1980s leisure company, brought back a forgotten cult tanning gel, and put sunscreen in a whipped-cream-style can. Vacation doesn’t sell a product with a vibe. It sells a world, and the sunscreen is your way in.
Scoring
Differentiation
Score 4.7
The category default: new brands sell what’s new. Heritage is something only old brands can claim, and it takes decades to earn.
What Vacation did: borrowed someone else’s. In 2024, it revived Orange Gelée, a discontinued cult tanning gel, with a modern SPF 30 formula. In April 2026, it marked the product’s 1926 origins with “100 Years of Gelée,” a five-piece fragrance collection and a centennial party in Hollywood.
So what: a brand only five years old threw a 100th birthday party, and nobody minded, because Vacation never pretended the history was its own. It turned nostalgia from a visual style into a product pipeline: something to revive, relaunch and sell.
Relevance
Score 4.0
The category default: sunscreen is a chore, kept in the bathroom cabinet and remembered only when packing for a trip.
What Vacation did: launched at Sephora in June 2026 with its bestselling SPF and fragrances, selling sunscreen alongside perfume and skincare as “the world’s best-smelling sunscreen.”
So what: Vacation moved sunscreen from the pharmacy aisle to the beauty counter. People don’t buy fragrance because they have to; they buy it because they want to. Selling SPF the same way turns a reluctant purchase into a year-round pleasure.
Talkability
Score 3.72
The category default: sunscreen ads show beaches, safety warnings and SPF numbers.
What Vacation did: made its first TV ad in May 2026 a parody of the category’s own past: a spoof of 1980s sunscreen commercials, starring a “sunscreen sommelier” who opens a bottle with a corkscrew.
So what: Vacation’s first move on mass media was to make fun of how sunscreen used to be sold. The joke only works if you know the category’s clichés, which makes the brand’s point for it: everyone else is still making those ads.
Our take
Every Vacation launch is an episode in the same story: the revival, the centennial, the TV parody. It’s closer to how an entertainment studio plans its releases than how a sunscreen brand plans a summer, and it’s working.
But nostalgia runs on borrowed material, and the supply isn’t endless. Every revival makes the next one harder to land, and a joke loses its surprise once everyone knows the punchline. Vacation has proved it can mine the past brilliantly. Its real test is whether it can create something new that people will feel nostalgic about twenty years from now. If it can, Vacation becomes a lasting lifestyle brand. If it can’t, it risks becoming a great joke that everyone has already heard.
Marketer takeaways
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1. SELL THE FEELING THE CATEGORY FORGOT.
Even a functional product can be reinvented by changing the emotion of using it.
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2. MAKE THE WORLD THE PRODUCT.
A fictional universe that shapes what you sell is much harder to copy than a tone of voice.
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3. PARODY THE CATEGORY, NOT THE CUSTOMER.
Mocking the clichés everyone else still uses makes your difference obvious without saying it.
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4. BORROW THE PAST, BUT BUILD THE FUTURE.
Nostalgia can launch a brand. Lasting brands create things people will one day be nostalgic for.
Advisor commentary
For Vacation, advisor Dagmara Szulce sees a brand selling the fantasy, not the fear:
“it makes sunscreen feel aspirational, collectible, and fun.”
Dagmara Szulce Group Executive Vice President Association of National Advertisers
Reviewers’ view
Reviewers credited Vacation with a strong position as a premium sunscreen alternative and distinct brand colors, plus memorable semi-satirical comedy writing with a consistent voice across its ads. They also praised its fully committed retro style.