Thoughts
Once again it is summer, which means scrolling the Poolsuite and Vaction webpages and feeling the summer.
Like honestly if you don't have the budget to hire a model to look sexy using your product what are you even doing.
I don't know how we ended up here. It's like. I kind of understand established companies not innovating (inventing good-smelling foaming sun-screen) or not using quality material (plastic bottles in easy-to-injection-mold colors and shapes) to cut costs. But I cannot believe that Vacation's marketing budget is bigger than Banana Boat's or Neutrogena's. So I don't understand why Vacation's marketing is so much better. The Banana Boat homepage image looks like it was shot at someone's backyard pool. Maybe because they're big, they have to try to look genuine. Like if they did a real photoshoot like Vacation did, it would come off as inauthentic. But the Vacation photoshoot comes off as inauthentic but I don't care because it looks good. I'm sitting here just looking at it. The Banana Boat and Neutrogena models are both holding the bottle super awkwardly so you can read the label which is so funny. I am on Neutrogena's website. I know it's Neutrogena sunscreen. It's also possible that, again as big companies, it would look bad for them to do an 80s-style sex-appeal ad. But like. You're a sunscreen company. You can get away with putting a model in a bikini, surely! You can have the woman put on nail polish. It's not like their resulting picture looks authentic. It just looks lazy.
Edit (:44): It is of-course possible to over-rely on sex appeal (e.g. the infamous Carl's Jr ads). And I respect that Banana Boat is trying to avoid that. However, it is marketing and so I expect it to look better than real-life in some way. And when it looks indistinguishable from a picture I could take of a woman at a pool putting on sunscreen I'm confused. Rent a hotel with a pool or take the picture at a beach in Malibu or have some kids playing in the background or crop out the box of pool supplies or give the woman some Ray-Bans or something.
Edit (:54): And while I am tearing apart Banana Boat in particular it is indicative of a larger trend where big companies don't have the attention to detail to get any part of their marketing looking actually good. Again, I don't think it's just about size-of-budget, I think it's about whether you do a small amount of good marketing or waste it on a bunch of bad marketing.