Brian Becker (00:01.998)
All right, what's up everybody? We are back with another episode of Why Brands Work. And today we're gonna be jumping into Vacation, Inc., a brand that I'm super excited about. We've talked in the past about what brands we would want to own the most out of all of them that we talk about. That was something we talked about with the Jolie episode. And while Jolie was my pick for brand that I would wanna own for growth potential.

Vacation is the brand I'd want to own for cool potential because they are absolutely the coolest brand around in my opinion at the moment So I'm here with will as usual. What's up? Well, how you doing? What's up? Super pumped to jump in here. Yeah, I love love this brand Definitely one of the best best brands I've seen like brand is such a a

a word that we use, it can mean a lot of things, but when I'm thinking of brand, I just mean like they have a very strong brand identity, very good customer experience. And they're probably one of the better ones I've ever seen. So I'm excited to jump in. Yeah, they've got a ton of personality. There's a lot about them that is just you see something from vacation and you know it's vacation. It's one of those things that they have built such a, you know,

a world, you know, I refer to this all the time. They do a lot of like world building around their product. It's more than just this product or images or things like that. You are transported somewhere else. So let's start talking about why, why is this, why should we care about vacation at the moment? What's, what's top reasons for you outside the brand? I don't know where to begin. I guess.

What, why I like it is where to begin is it's another brand that had a very unique and cool sort of a starting story, I guess, like how they started, how they went about launching. It's just different than a lot of other brands. And I found it to be very unique and it's not, it's not the way that most brands go about launching a brand or a DTC store or something.

Brian Becker (02:22.957)
Totally. Yeah, I think that that's a big point when you start to consider like they built the audience first. Yes. Which is something we'll talk about. I think another big part of it as well is like they are, I think really starting to hit their stride now in terms of retail distribution. I think this summer they're going to explode just based on the work. We're filming this in April of 2024.

I think this upcoming summer they're launching in Target or just launched in Target pretty recently. And so I think it's going to become a lot more mainstream of a brand which could catapult them, you know, just with how strong their brand is. I think a lot of people that are kind of in the space right now know who they are. A lot of people that love design know who they are. But I don't think they really have hit the mainstream yet. And they're about to. I think that this is going to be, they're going to explode.

you know, there's a lot of product development and stuff. They do some of the best collaborations that I've ever seen of a brand. and you know, I think the biggest thing too, is that this is really the only like, kind of let's disrupt sunscreen brand that I've seen and it's a huge market. You know, it's a massive, massive market. and so yeah, I think those are probably the core reasons as to why I think this is, this is something we should care about. Yes. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Where are we off to next, Brian? Let's talk about their products. Let's get into that first and we'll kind of come back to the sunscreen, you know, come back to their marketing and how they actually like build a world around it. So you've bought the product before, right? Yeah. Do you have some with you right now? Spritz right now. nice. Yeah. Yeah, I got it right here. Right in front of me. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah.

They've got the whole line of everything you would expect from sunscreen. Leisurely now, I'm fully leisure activated. Yeah. How's the scent? What do you think of the scent? The scent is like that 80s vibe too, kind of. It's like when I spray it on, it reminds me of putting on like banana boat or something when I was a kid or something like, you know? Yeah.

Brian Becker (04:40.653)
No, it's especially that's that's one of the interesting things about them is, you know, they're not just even though their brand is so powerful, they're not just slapping a cool brand on, you know, mass produced sunscreen. They went through a lot of trouble to actually get the scent exactly what they wanted. You know, they hired like a scent company. What are the perfumery type place? The two guys? Yeah, the two guys I saw that on there. I can't pronounce this word at two.

to a whatever that perfume, the cologne hired some like specialists do that. And they even have like a lot of their products are like dermatologist approved. You know, a lot of people say that but they actually talk about like they mentioned each dermatologist. So I do think that yeah, it's not just some like, cheeky 80s vibe brand with like logos slapped on to like generic products. I think everything is like,

is pretty elevated here from a product sort of angle. And they've definitely done a good job like formulating it. Yeah, it's very intentional. I think the, you know, there's even somebody from like the American Cancer Society, I think on their board. You know, they I think another really good example is they just this last week or two dropped a product called like the orange jelly. Yes, all that. Yeah. Yeah. So this is, you know, I had no idea what it was before vacation.

I don't consider myself like very much of a French Riviera tanner. So, you know, maybe that's why. But apparently this was like a cult classic product that was produced for years and years and years and then discontinued in the last decade or so that, you know, very much through the nostalgia vibes of what vacation represents, it was the core like tanning product, right? This orange jolie. And they actually went out and found...

a bunch of super fans of this old product, people that worked on the old product, people that really knew what it was and how it worked, and they brought it up to modern SPF standards and re -released this product under the Vacation brand. So this is the extent that they're going to really, really build out great sunscreen. And it's impressive. And they have a whole line of all of this different stuff. They've got the spritz that you have. They have a normal spray. They have a normal...

Brian Becker (07:09.005)
you know, like cream for lotion or whatever. They even have, did you see the whip cream? The whip cream. Yeah, I was going to talk about it because I think that's when it gets to their products, the whip cream is like, that was like a viral sensation. Yeah. So yeah, it's like a really cool, they're innovating a little bit here too, you know. They are exactly. They're innovating. They're finding places that, you know, people, their product or their market wants different

stuff such as bringing back the jelly or like having this cool you know whipped version of the product. Even the baby oil did you did you read about that I think similar yeah like they a lot of people were just putting on baby oil and just in the 80s I guess and just frying their their skin right but they put like SPF in it I've never I don't think I've ever seen SPF with baby oil I'm not sure if that even exists. I think that that's probably a innovation as well there yeah yeah yeah and so they're they're you know

And that's just the sunscreen line. You know, that's just the, which is, it's interesting because vacation is right. It's the sunscreen is kind of their primary product, but they have so much stuff to, you know, we'll get into the world building as we're talking about with the marketing and everything, but they use their products to build that world. You know, it's very similar to like liquid death. We've talked about before, right? Where they have like a casket flask or like, you know, the, the giant Halloween.

you know, decoration that's like an inflatable, like, murder your thirst guy, right? Well, vacation has their own version of this in terms of like, you can buy a vacation beach towel. My brother -in -law and sister -in -law would probably, were making fun of me all summer because I literally wore a vacation t -shirt pretty much every, you know, once a weekend for the entire weekend, the entire summer at the beach because that's just...

you know, it was the right vibe. You know, that's the vibe I wanted to bring to the beach was I'm wearing a vacation t -shirt, you know. And it's, so they do all of these different products from the t -shirts to they have a head hammock where like if you're laying on the beach, it like props your head up or whatever, you know, that are all branded in this way that are, that really create that world. Yeah. The frisbee, that little, you remember the little, yeah. Yeah.

Brian Becker (09:30.157)
Yeah. Another thing I love is like the products that they sell or they don't sell. I'm not really sure. like the hovercraft or like, I remember this when I was a little kid, there was like Aqua cycles. I don't know if they still have those. Yeah. The Aqua cycle. You can probably find them on some, you know, tourist beach in Brazil or whatever at this point. 80s and 90s and vacationing in Florida. yeah, exactly. Yeah.

No, I agree. That's it. And just to clarify what you're talking about there the fake products This is something so interesting that they do And you just you could you go look at their products on their site They have these out -of -stock products that it could like, you know the aqua cycle that will mentioned or a Tiki bar You know where you can go and buy like a Tiki bar, right? And it doesn't it's not actually a product but it adds to the product page as you're kind of going through there because I

Their website itself is a product too. It's such an experience, right? There's so much going on there in terms of actually just enjoying being on the site. I'll often go there just to like see what's new, see what's going on because they have so much different stuff. They do collaborations constantly. There's like, you know, Arizona iced tea. We there's Prince, the like tennis company, you know, they're really trying to find things that represent.

what vacation feels like. It's a very cool thing to watch as it develops. And it has created such a fun, it makes me want to go back and buy stuff all the time. I could use a new vacation t -shirt or a hat or this 1999 tennis champion kind of shirt or whatever. There's just a never -ending list of stuff that we can purchase and buy.

Another thing I liked about their products that I thought was really cool was how they were taking the product. Let's say it's a classic lotion. And they were taking that product and turning them into air fresheners. Because that is very much like an 80s kind of vibe, like the hanging air freshener in your car. And they were using that as, you know,

Brian Becker (11:52.365)
checkout upsells, cart upsells, really cart upsells in the cart. And I think there was one that if you, if you spent over like $65, you just got one of them for free. I forget which one it was, but they were, I think maybe it was the baby oil one at the time that I did it. Yeah, you got a free baby oil air freshener if you, if you order over $65. And I, I've just never seen somebody, it's like,

in some ways is genius. I know that that was not their intention. They're like, let's just do this for cart upsells, you know, but it's just really cool to see how they're taking, you know, a sunscreen and they were able to turn that into just a whole nother product as well. Yeah, no, I mean, they do it with the candles too. You know, you can buy the scented candles and everything. The, you know, one of my favorites that is hilarious is Ballboy scented candle.

You know, like that was one of their collaborations with Prince, right? Or like fresh tennis balls. You know, they have, it's just so genius. Honestly, there's no other way to describe it. It's just genius. The way that they continually use marketing and product. Everything they do is building the brand. It's inherent in every single thing. It's not.

starting with a product and creating a brand around it, it's starting with a brand and creating the products for that. Which I think is a really good segue into kind of talking about how Vacation got started because it truly is. You know, we mentioned already that they, you know, started with an audience first. So let's jump into that a little bit and talk about how they actually got started, where that audience came from and why Vacation.

was kind of born from it. Do you want to give us a little exposition on that? Yeah. So they started out as one of their founders, three founders, started a Tumblr page called Pool Suite. I don't know if it was Pool Suite at the time. That was eventually became a SoundCloud, right? And it's just there was this community that was listening to this. It was sort of this like 80s vacation.

Brian Becker (14:12.301)
sort of by house music, right? Yeah. Yeah. And like, that's all it was for years, really. Pool Suite. Yeah, he was just creating playlists. And this is Marty Bell, by the way. So Marty was just creating playlists that people were listening to and coming and vibing to. And yeah, I kind of consider him a little bit in like the indie hacker kind of space in my mind. You know, he's like very,

born of the internet type person, try to just figuring stuff out and early days Tumblr kind of stuff and has this group of people following all of these playlists. And he was like, well, he had an idea of just what if we were pairing this like tropical house, 80s, 90s vibe stuff with retro videos of that era, people on the beach, Baywatch style, people running around.

by the pool, you know, very glamorous, very nostalgic, which led him to the idea that became Pool Suite. Which I don't remember when I initially stumbled upon Pool Suite or even how I did, but it's been years now. So you knew about Pool Suite before vacation. I knew about I knew about Pool Suite before vacation existed. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know why it made its way into my world, but it did very early on.

And I was hooked immediately. I was 100 % the target market for that, where I want to throw it on a separate window or whatever and just let the music play. Because if you haven't been there before, go to Poolsuite immediately. Honestly, pause the video and go to Poolsuite right now. And go check it out, because they have designed it to look like a 90s desktop.

So it has, you know, you have your own cursor that's kind of following through and you have little desktop icons and there's a music player and a video player on there. As it loads, there's like a loading screen as if the computer is starting up. It's a very, very cool way to interact with a website and it plays just really vibey, tropical, cool music. The videos are all like of the era boat races and like, you know,

Brian Becker (16:35.181)
bikini competitions and things like that. And so it's a very fun way to just like spend a little time and throw it up on the side and listen to the music. I mentioned this the other day. I use it as like background music for when I'm working. I'll throw it up and just use that as kind of my jam for the day. So yeah, it's crazy. And that's the kind of stuff that it was just built to be cool.

Like that's, that was the idea is like, this is a fun, interesting, entertaining idea. And that is what made it work. And, you know, when we come back to that idea of like, what's the stupidest idea you can come up with, it's like, okay, let's make a computer inside a website. That's a nineties computer using the technology of 20 or 30 years ago. But it reminds you of that and plays music and like that it's just a normal music player, but like, we're going to put a whole bunch of effort into making it.

look like something from 30 years ago. That's a crazy idea if you say that to somebody and somebody's gonna be like, why would you do that? But then in practice, when you see it, you're like, man, like, wow, I really get this, you know? Yeah, the execution's really good on that. They had the community, I think, really from the original pool suite. And yeah, I mean, that whole pool OS pool suite is...

one of the coolest things I've ever seen a brand do. It's very, very unique. And I can even talk to the data behind it. I realized when I was doing my research that, did you know that, I don't know if you knew this, that 10 % of their traffic is coming from referrals from Pulse Suite, which doesn't sound like a lot, but let me tell you, it's a lot.

because, like most brands, even the ones that have like a lot of raving fans, like skims, for example, like they're under 5%, 3%, you know, to see something in double digits is wild. I've never seen them. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it really truly is like the epitome of creating something that's just entertaining. That's driving product purchases. cause that's, I mean, that's a hundred percent where I came from. That was my refer.

Brian Becker (19:00.429)
to get into vacation for the first time was seeing it on the Pool Suite site. So you can't, okay, wow. Cause I was thinking maybe people order then go to Pool Suite, but people are going to Pool Suite first and that's really referring them to vacation. Yeah, like I said, I knew about Pool Suite before vacation existed. You knew about the poolsuite .net or the Pool Suite like, I guess, Tumblr page or SoundCloud. No, poolsuite .fm.

.fm, okay, yeah. Yeah, like that as a music player, you know, I used to show people back, you know, this is back in the Saigon days even. Yeah. You know, we were, that was kind of my main thing is like a designer of like, this is cool. Check this out. Yeah, so that was, it's been a long time that that's been going and you know, they have, they have a bunch of features on there too. You can like change the desktop background. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, sign the textbook.

sign the guestbook, change the desktop background. I don't know if you want to get into all, there's some crazy, it gets real deep. I don't know if it's the spot to do it, but there's a lot of things that's going on here. Yeah, it's amazing. And so this is really where that audience came from, right? You know, we have people that identify with that vibe, you know, and that's, I kind of just said it before, you know, it was something that I used to,

make me look cool, right? It's like, hey, look at this cool thing that I use. Having it up on my side monitor as I'm at the co -working space or whatever is a vibe -y way to tell people around you that, look at this cool thing I know. And so I think it created a lot of people like that. It was a like -minded way of, or it brings people together. And that's always what you're looking for in a brand, right? It's like, people need to raise their hand and be able to say, hey, this is,

this is who I am. This says something about who I am. This is I use this product because of X. And Vacation really gives you that of like, I associate with this vibe. And so yeah, they launched the sunscreen brand. There was a lot of talk about, Marty has said that they were approached by multiple, multiple people with like different product ideas that they could kind of latch on to the Poole Suite brand. And eventually they settled on building out Vacation.

Brian Becker (21:24.813)
That's when he brought in his other co -founders. Marty is, I think, solely responsible, other than he hired out some development work and stuff to build out Pool Suite FM. But that's later on, once vacation rolled around, is when he brought in his other co -founders for vacation itself. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about, you know, obviously 10 % of their traffic is coming from Pool Suite. But what...

What other things just make Now Vacation such a strong contender in the space? What is it about their marketing that stands out to you in how they're kind of driving forward now? Yeah, I think that the founders were really kind of intentional about it. And I think that they had really sort of noticed that...

that the category, I remember one of them quoting, saying that the category was very like fun in sort of the 80s, 90s, and then it became very clinical, I think was the word he used, you know, probably in the 2000s. And I could think of that like Neutrogena, Skin Defense and all this sort of stuff, you know? And so whenever I hear...

founders talking like that, you know, cause you'll see that like the liquid death guy talked about that. Did the Jolie, they talked about that, even skims. They were kind of like, how do I come in and disrupt this category or maybe not disrupt is the right word, but they notice that gap in the category. And for them, it was like a, it was like a nostalgia thing, you know, that they came back to. So I found that to be like, they were already thinking at that category level.

and how they can position themselves differently. And I think that's a big, there's a lot of overlapping trends here, but I think that is one that I think about a lot. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that, you know, coming back and reinvigorating a category, I think is probably the best way to put it, is such an exciting thing to do. And then putting your own spin on it and actually just creating, you know, something that's worth actually engaging with. You know, you can't get...

Brian Becker (23:47.469)
Every time we talk about these things, it's always about these products say something about you. If you use it, you're shouting to the world that this is who I am and this is why I use this product for X reason. And so I think that that's one of the most exciting parts, I guess, about their marketing. They've obviously done a huge thing with collaborations. We touched on this briefly, but that is all.

a great influencer strategy in a way, because you're plugging into the market of prints or you're plugging into the market of Arizona iced tea, just by having these associations with them. They did a puzzle with a brand called Le Puzz that makes puzzles, right? Whammo is who they did the partnership with for the Frisbee. There's so many of these different opportunities to be able to actually build out a...

build out, borrow somebody else's audience and start to get them into understanding who vacation is and really seeing them as like a brand that they should be paying attention to.

Brian Becker (25:01.357)
Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, I think that it's basically like joint ventures, you know, but, you know, vacation style, they would make fun of it being a joint venture, you know, some of their marketing where, if you get an email, it's from like the director of the consumer division, Ray Smith or something. I forget what it is off the top, but just like funny cheeky sort of stuff like that.

is like another reason why it works really well. It's like they're making fun of the whole 80s too, you know? Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's an aspect of just, it's part of the bit, right? I don't necessarily, I don't see it as much as like making fun of it, as much as just like, that is, that's how they convey the actual world that you're in, you know?

Every single thing is based on, is all of the copy is written in like a business memo. If it's some sort of business something, it really has that feeling for it. And I'm absolutely in love with it. Even I've, you know, on a couple of our posts recently, like in responding to, you know, the like founders have commented on something or whatever, and I'm chatting with them and like in the comment I've responded in like vacation speak, you know.

And my like, you know, this is another fun thing. They have a, a, a business card generator on there where you can claim positions at vacation. And I've literally, I've seen people have this on their LinkedIn actually, where they've gone and claimed a fake position and then like put it on their LinkedIn profile. Yeah. Which is, which is huge. Right. I think that's how they launched. Did you read about how that, I think that was like part of their launch strategy. It was, yeah, it was a very early, a very early virality.

like play that they did, which there have been many that we can get into in just a second here. But you know, like my title is I'm the president of the Friday morning sauna meeting. Like, you know, that's like, that's just my title. And like when I was communicating with them, I responded with that. I was like, you know, signed Brian president of the Friday morning sauna meeting, you know, like, and so it's, if you can compel someone to feel that, you know, like it's a game.

Brian Becker (27:25.645)
It's something that it's an entertaining thing for me to think about how would I write this if I were, I mean, I'm a marketer, so I love that kind of thing where I'm like, I want to test my skills at trying to match this copy voice or whatever. But just if you want to participate like that in something, it just shows you how strong a brand is. And being able to try to mimic that voice just shows how strong the copy is. There's a huge amount of effort that goes into making sure everything has that like,

80s, 90s business memo feeling to it, which you can read a snippet of copy and know it's from vacation within a second. And so it's a lot of fun. I think that's one of the places that they really shine. But let's talk about some of these other virality plays that they have. You mentioned the business card one. Is there anything else on your mind that you're thinking about? I mean, there is.

The classic whip was one that's very, I just looked at what was people are talking about on TikTok. There is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes in pool .os, the pool suite with the crypto stuff. I mean, we could get into that. We can spend a whole episode on how this brand is using crypto. They have their own sub stack. I don't know if you saw it called the Palm report sort of.

like the Rob report, if you remember that as a kid. So yeah, there's a lot of cool little viral things they're doing. Yeah, no, the Palm report is awesome. They've created many like, Palm report, like newscast videos as well, where it's like, you know, 80s 90s style news anchor standing there with like the microphone next to a pool like reporting on the products like they're.

And yeah, the NFT crypto space was, you know, that's something that in multiple interviews, you can see Marty is like pretty interested in that. They have, you know, the leisure -ist, you know, NFT that you can buy where you become like you have your own kind of like, you know, think of like the apes type thing or, you know, the punks or whatever. They had a leisure -ist that came out. I think you can sell it on OpenSea.

Brian Becker (29:49.645)
Yeah, you can make it and then claim it and same as any other NFT sell it. They did a partnership with those with like Ralph Lauren as well. There's like a whole series of like of leisure is that are all like Ralph Lauren clothing. The thing that I was really interested in is they have a something called the Manor Dow. Yeah, so to yeah, that that was so interesting to me. I don't know where it ever went. I never ended up like buying.

the NFE or whatever with this. But it is definitely the NFE that I was closest to buying. I was, I never purchased it. I didn't purchase any of them during the craze. But that was the one that I was closest to. Like I, even if it doesn't turn into anything, I just love the idea of it. But it was a membership to Manor DAO. And the whole idea was like, it was a group of, you know, all the people that were part of the DAO, all the money was going towards buying an

actual mansion or manor and then turning that into like the headquarters of manor dow slash vacation slash pool suite that your membership would gain you access to like the parties and the you know and being able to stay there and there would be like airbnb like airbnb being the rooms and like you'd be able to make you know money off of like the the proceeds from it after like the operational expenses like all the members of the of the community and like that.

That's just so genius to me. It's like, okay, if that that I've always been interested in like, how do you use blockchain and everything to create physical spaces and access to like physical space? And so I was I was so enthralled by that. And so I'd love to see if that actually like manifests. But you can tell that they're just really they're ingrained in trying to be, as you said before, like disruptors or, you know, innovators around the space.

There's another, you know, they have another like founder group as well that is just for founders. I think it's called like the Jacuzzi Club or something like that. It's just for founders and people that want to like push, that want to innovate, that want to do something different and kind of find like -minded people to work with on those kind of projects. And so, yeah, I mean, I actually just applied the other day. I don't know if I'm that much of an innovator, but I was like, these are the people I want to learn from and be, you know, and work with.

Brian Becker (32:14.285)
I think that's how they originally met, right? I don't know if I read that right, but like the two, they met Marty through the Jacuzzi club or he had the Jacuzzi club. I don't know the exact details, but yeah, it's, they are, they're, yeah, like the way they use their brand and who knows what happens with the whole crypto space, but like,

I could see, you know, back then that they were really on the forefront of doing some of this stuff. Like it wasn't just like, Hey, buy my NFT. You know, I don't think I saw, I mean, I saw some brands doing NFTs. I didn't see it like, obviously they were doing it in a way cooler way. And then the Dow thing is just genius. No, I, it's, it's crazy. That's, that's the one, the one Dow that I was like, that's a, that's a very, very actually good idea.

of how to use blockchain. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about, we touched on their site. Let's talk about the site. Let's talk about some of their emails and the stuff that they're doing there because that's really where everyone talks about like a digital playground. And that's like a very overused kind of term, I think, because it's very rare other than if it's like a video game or something like that, that it actually feels like a playground. But vacation is actually a digital playground.

Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, the fact that there's, you know, kind of an homage to their origin of the Poolsuit FM stuff. As soon as you get on vacation, you can turn on, you know, music. There's a there's a vibe. What's it called? The vibe mechanic or the vibe machine, something vibe machine 2000. But basically, you are able to play your choice of, you know, there's.

steel drums, there is, you know, beach sounds, the vibe generator TM, you got the ocean breeze, steel drum.

Brian Becker (34:24.269)
all on a little vibe generator at the bottom. So you really are actually able to create the vibes that you want. It's a game in a way. It's very interactive. Like we said, we mentioned the fake products that they have. We mentioned how all of them are oriented around actually creating this vibe and this world that you can actually take a step into as you're on the website.

You know, all the model images are holding like an 80s style cell phone, you know, like the huge brick, right? That's where you can do, you can shuffle your business card and choose your own. And even something I love as well is their discount coupon code that comes in from their pop -up looks like a clipped coupon from a magazine. You know, it has the...

the checkered line as if you were going to cut it out with scissors and take it into a physical. Yeah, very 80s style. Yeah, like, and some direct response markers still do that. But, but yeah, like I love, yeah, I liked their pop up. It was good. Yeah, it was very good. Any other thoughts on their on their web? I know I just kind of like ran through it. I love this brand so much. It's so hard for me to not just like gush about about it. But any other thoughts on their site or that?

Yeah, I thought that, you know, when I was looking at it, we talked about just like how much traffic is coming from Poolsuite. They also, you know, I think that you'd want to probably talk about how they, and you kind of tease that they are growing more and more distribution. And I think you can buy them, you know, nationwide and Ulta maybe right now.

or like some other spots in Nordstrom. So they're doing some brick and mortar. The Amazon store is pretty big too. But yeah, I mean, I think the playground, like you said, is the DTC store. And, you know, another thing that like really I thought that was cool about the experience I had online was my unboxing experience. Again, like the...

Brian Becker (36:45.005)
You know, a lot of times when you buy something online, even from like the Shopify store, the DTC stores, it's still just a box, like a packing slip in the product. Like with them, like I opened it up, it was like in this like really cool, like sleeve, like branded vacation sleeve. The packing slip again was like, I use the word poking fun, but maybe like homage to the eighties.

It was like the fulfillment department, you know? Right. Yeah. And, you know, I talked about how a lot of things are signed by Ray Smith. I think that's his name. I don't know the, the one of whoever this fake guy that's in charge of their, I forget what his, his title is customer support department or whatever, but then I got this scratch off, lottery sort of ticket for the metal detecting championships.

And so I scratched it off. I don't know if you can actually win this, but, but yeah. And then like you can scan it and it goes, it goes to full suite too. So, yeah, I thought that that's like really, again, I've never seen a brand. I mean, it's even rare to see brands put direct mail or some sort of like something like this. Mailer. Yeah. Yeah. We're inside. but to do like a lottery ticket, I thought was really.

Again, just shows how much they've thought about customer experience and how it overlaps with the branding. You know, like this is very much fits in. Like I remember in the eighties and nineties scratching off lottery tickets. Yeah. And maybe even doing that on vacation. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. It's true. They have, they're building it at every turn and like, you know, I bring up their emails because they have some of the best emails I've ever seen. Yeah. They,

Every single one is like clearly very, very intentional and has been designed very well, has a lot of, you know, they've blueprinted them very hard. They know why they're sending it. They know what they're trying to do. and there's a few different things that they, that they do with them that I find really interesting. The first is they have some emails similar to these fake products on their site that have absolutely nothing to do with the brand.

Brian Becker (39:05.997)
Like it's just, it's purely world building. I've shared a couple with you, I think like the, you know, the glass bottom boat that was for sale. It's like a million dollar glass bottom boat that is actually for sale in, you know, somewhere in the Caribbean, right? And it's listed on a site that you could, you know, the links take you to this site where you could buy this glass bottom boat from 1992 or whatever that's being sold. And it just fits the vibe of what's going on.

or there's actually a listing for, you mentioned the beach peddler thing, the beach tricycle. There was one of those for sale that they sent out an email about and used the images from that site and talked about it's leisure approved. It's something that they are, excuse me, vacation approved, like leisure enhancing equipment that is being sold online, which is just...

incredible. That's such an amazing way of taking stuff that is interesting to your audience that doesn't have anything to do with your brand, that isn't something that you're trying to sell them, and you're just giving it something that they would be interested in. So you're sending it to them. How many other brands are actually just trying to entertain their customers? And just you know when you get an email from them, then it's not just going to be another product feature with XYZ like, hey,

come buy this, here's a discount. It's actually something that is fun and you might want to read into. Yeah, I love that. And like that is part of their strategy. You know, their founder, I think is on the record of saying that it's like, if we're going to be in, I think you've said, if we're going to be putting our brand in front of people's face, whether on Instagram or email every day, it can't just be like, here's our sun screen buy it. Here's our sunscreen buy it. You know? So yeah, they're very much trying to entertain. Yeah.

And I think that could be why they, it's similar to when we were talking about Liquid Death where they were using, I forget how he framed it, it was like, you know, they're using humor as a way, a big part of their strategy, you know, and it just can, you can like, once you've tapped into that, instead of just like, we're just going to send promotional emails and product -based emails and sort of stuff like that, then,

Brian Becker (41:29.485)
Yeah, like really, it just opens you up to do all sorts of things like, you know, email glass boats that are for sale in the Caribbean. Yeah, no, that's true. And yeah, they are, they're really starting to bridge this gap as well between what is brand was what is entertainment, what is on the other side, what is digital and what is physical, you know, I think.

the products that they have from the sunscreens, obviously that's like their core line, but having all of the merch and everything like that. A lot of brands have merch, but it just feels different with vacation, right? It's like a beach towel is so different from just like everyone's hat, right? And a hat for vacation is even different from everyone else's hat because it's about being in the sun, you know? Yeah, it fits in with the brand. It's like a lot of brands, like we're just putting our logo on this to get more sales. Right.

Right or just to say that we have hats or to give them to employees or whatever, you know, and so Those there's those kind of things the lip balms the candles the flavors the scents all these different things, right? But even past that Vacation throws parties. Yeah, you know, that's another core part of this vacation vibe. Why are we all so You know enamored with this is because we have memories of like it's a it's a fun vacation time

We're off of work, we're hanging out with our family and friends, and a core part of that is like a party, right? And vacation is throwing parties. I was in Brooklyn a year or two ago, and I'm walking down the street, and there's a guy wearing a vacation hat. I was like, I love that brand. I love your hat. And he was like, yeah, I DJ'd one of their parties here in Brooklyn. That's why I have the hat.

or South by Southwest, I think they hosted a huge party. And then if you, one of the crypto things they're doing, I forget what it was called, it wasn't Grand Leisure, but it was something else. Like you could buy like a fake, it was like an NFT, it was like a fake, it was like a MX gold card that we get you access into their South by Southwest party. They are leveraging sort of that crypto element.

Brian Becker (43:43.757)
Yeah, and they've had them in California. I think they did a Catalina Island party last year. Yeah. They did a Catalina wine tour. Like, it's a holiday, 90s thing. Maybe. Yeah. But they did a party on Catalina Island just off of LA. The team is based in Miami. I think they have multiple parties in Miami regularly. And they launch all of them via their email. You see invites to them constantly.

It's definitely a goal of mine to get to one of these vacation parties at some point But it's a you know, they're really starting to bring the brand into the world and now that it's got target now that it's coming forward You know gonna be in a lot more retail distributors distributors I think we're gonna see just a massive explosion of people that really really use vacation I think this could be the summer that vacation kind of takes over a little bit and Yeah, so I'm here for it. I'm excited to see so

Let's wrap up a little bit. Give me two or three reasons that you think vacation is going to crush it or why they are crushing it, and I'll go after you. OK, so there's a lot. I think that the three that I'd probably pick, the first one is noticing the gap in the category and being intentional there. It wasn't just some sort of cheeky play. It was like they actually noticed what was wrong with currently in the category.

And I really liked that. I think that how they've launched to by, you know, sometimes I think about it as like having that unfair unfair advantage, you know, and I mean that in a good way. Like, how can you find an unfair advantage with your brand? And like by them having Poolsweet, them already having this community, you know, they were able to leverage that instead of just, you know, we're going to run a bunch of Facebook ads, you know. So I thought that.

That's a real big reason why this brand is going to continue to grow too. It's a huge part of the brand. and I think the last one is the products. I think that the way they've gone about making the products, you know, I think that because they've, they have this nostalgic sort of brand, like it can be so much bigger than just a sunscreen line. Historically, you're like, we're going to launch a sunscreen brand. It's okay. Well, like, what do you got like three or four products you can maybe launch?

Brian Becker (46:09.389)
you know, but we're able to just launch so much more. And we talked about how they were able to just take one product and duplicate that as an air freshener, you know, which worked for no other skincare brand, but because their brand is linked to this 80s nostalgic vibe, it works. Yeah. And then you, it kind of links to your first comment and your third one there. The quality of the products is so high. I think that's fun. Yeah. My first one is like, the quality is so high. They really put a lot of thought into like,

you know, with the jelly, they're like doing research, getting people together to build it. They're using a perfumery to like make the sense that they want. I think that's like a huge aspect of, you know, at the end of the day, you always got to come back to is the product good because people aren't going to buy sunscreen if it doesn't actually protect them from the sun, you know. The second thing I would say is their ability to entertain is just crazy. You know, it's really just.

I want to say like, I want other people to suggest because I want to know more brands like this, but it's just them and like liquid death, honestly, that I think are entertaining at the level that these brands are right now. I can honestly say I do not think, you know, at least in the English speaking market, I do not know of any other brands that are this good at creating a world. And then the third is like, I just think that this is gonna become the playbook. Like we,

There's so much we don't know yet about how blockchain, NFT, the metaverse, digital products, along with physical products, digital world, along with physical world. There's no telling how deeply that's going to affect people over the next 10, 20, 30 years. And I think that this is going to be kind of a textbook example of like, hey, this is when

brands like this kind of started, you know, Liquid Death, Vacation, where you're starting to see people building, you know, how quickly is it going to be if you take some sort of like, you know, the long -term example would be like, you remember Second Life and that kind of game that is kind of like precursor to the metaverse or whatever? How easy is it for you to imagine a vacation area in, you know, some meta, you know, Roblox or whatever, you know, Snoop Dogg does his thing of like,

Brian Becker (48:35.789)
hosting a concert, like there's probably going to be a pool suite vacation, you know, pool you can go to in the metaverse within the next two or three years. Right. And so you just, this is where things are going. When you can create a world around it that is replicable in all different spaces, whether it's in your mind or on the site or in the real world or in the metaverse or whatever. It's Omniworld here now. Omniworld marketing. Yeah.

We're pitching Omni Channel and we are starting Omni World Marketing. Yeah, Flo can be the Omni World Marketing experts. No, I think that's a really good point. I think it's just to piggyback off that, like I was, you know, I had circled like this brand is really up to something special with crypto. Like I've never seen anybody do and I'm using crypto vaguely.

but it incorporated a lot of what you talked about blockchain meta metaverse. And it'll be interesting to see, cause I do feel like their team is very much on the cutting edge. You know, it's funny, it's a nostalgic eighties throwback brand that has, some founders that are really, I think on the cutting edge of what's sort of happening in the coming up in the world. Agreed. Totally agreed. Cool. All right. Well,

As usual, this is why brands work this episode on vacation. Do not forget, we're going to have a ton of resources for you. Will did a full funnel breakdown, all their ads and traffic and ordered the product and like, you know, did that, went through the unboxing experience. I collected a bunch of their emails. I think like over 175 of them from the last couple of years, put them all into a swipe file for you guys. We have an entire, you know, like the, the, the whole spreadsheet of exactly what the numbers are on, on the brand.

You'll be able to download that right below this video if you're on our website. And so go and grab that if you want to dig in a little bit more yourself. And if you have any questions, suggestions, obviously this is still a very new thing for us. So we're happy to hear if you want to hear about a certain brand or you want to talk about something or you have some suggestions, we're happy to hear it. But make sure you are subscribed, following us on LinkedIn, wherever you get your podcasts and that kind of stuff so that you get updates on when the newest episodes are coming out. And we'll see you next time. So thank you. Have a good one.

Brian Becker (50:57.229)
Later, guys.