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Nivea’s powerful sun safe ad takes Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact Award

Nivea Sun has won the January 2015 Colmar Brunton Ad Impact award for ‘Take Care Out There’ for an ad created alongside American artist Thomas Leveritt that gives a very literal view of how sunblock can protect your skin

New Zealanders tend to make hay while the sun shines, so we take every opportunity we can get to race out to the beach, sit outside enjoying a barbecue, or lie in some grassy hillock soaking up the rays. But New Zealand, like Australia, has one of the highest skin cancer rates in the world and Nivea’s ad shows everyone that sunblock should be an essential part of venturing outside with the help of US artist Thomas Leveritt, who made his name with the short film ‘How the sun sees you’. 

The ad is a poignant reminder of how delicate our skin is and how harsh the sun’s rays are on our side of the world and Colmar Brunton account director Harriet Dixon says it’s been very effective.

“Nivea’s new ad aims to show just how effective sunblock can be. And this new ad has proven to be highly effective. The ad highlights our love for the sun, with the beach used as the film location. A UV camera set up under a Nivea tent on Bondi Beach shows ‘beach lovers’ what their skin looks like with and without Nivea Sun sunblock. The result is powerful, with clear differences showing just how well Nivea Sun protects your skin,” she says.

She says the ad has done great things for the brand, “…communicating new news about the product which is relevant to consumers and results in high motivation to purchase Nivea Sun and strong emotional engagement with the brand, building long-term affinity and brand equity. So, not only did consumers sit up, pay attention and remember it was for Nivea Sun, they have bought into the brand proposition and as a result are more likely to buy Nivea Sun – what a great return on their investment.”

Leveritt said in a release: “I expected Australians and Kiwis to be much more clued up about the sun than Americans or Brits. Which they seem to be! [a Nivea survey revealed that 78 percent of Kiwis think that they need to be more sun smart, 62 percent of New Zealanders have felt concerned about others suffering in the sun and 93 percent of Kiwis have offered to help]. But being able to actually see the sun damage changed that message from an intellectual one to an emotional one. The emotions unleashed when people see themselves in ultraviolet are so interesting; the unselfconscious glee, surprise or fascination is almost like an undiscovered tribe seeing themselves in the mirror for the first time. And people get it, pretty much straight away. When I was a kid, lying out in the Texas sun all day with no sunscreen, was regarded as fine; we all did it. But now we know better. So Nivea is really doing their part to encourage people to take care of themselves and others in the sun. Hopefully, people will watch the film and think, yeah, sunscreen’s not such a bad idea.”

Nivea has a bit of a history when it comes to innovative ads and it has earned a host of awards for its troubles in recent years. In 2013 it created a solar powered at with FCB São Paolo that was able to charge devices.

Then last year, in a continuation of that idea, the pair created an ad that allowed beach-goers to keep track of their kids.

As Fast Company wrote: “The page features a detachable bracelet made from humidity-resistant paper that you fit to your child’s wrist, download the app and sync it with the bracelet. Parents can set the distance limit of how far their little beach bundle of joy can wander and will be alerted if (or when) that distance is crossed.”

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