SICKDOGWOLFMAN Wants Its SPF to be “Most Talked About Sunscreen Brand in the World”

SICKDOGWOLFMAN’s newly-launched sunscreen brand, SLATHER, is a way for the agency to experiment with building its own brand, but ultimately address a communications issue: most sunscreen brands still advertise to “women in bikinis” and families, despite men being more likely to spend extended time outside.

In the past few years, the traditionally ‘clinical’ category has been disrupted by brands like the Australian Ultra-Violette, clever copy-led Vacation, and cosmetically elegant Korean SPF players like Beauty of Joseon. Yet there’s still a gap in the market, SICKDOGWOLFMAN creative director Jess Wheeler assures LBB, because those brands aren’t advertising to men.

“Some of them we admire, but I’d still argue that the cliches are mostly the same,” he says.

“SPF sunscreen marketing reaches for very low hanging fruit. It’s still about the beach. It’s still about the pool. It’s still about summer and holidays. But the sun doesn’t just magically appear when you’re on vacation. The sun is there when you’re working outside building a shed. It’s there when you’re having a three hour surf.

“I’m obviously generalising here, but the fact that sunscreen brands have positioned sunscreen as something that mostly women in bikinis by the pool and families at the beach use - when it’s primarily men spending extended periods of time outside and subsequently contracting skin cancer - is a glaring communication issue.”

Jess argues such a communications issue “puts a query on the efficacy of the current marketing landscape of SPF brands”. The agency team didn’t feel inspired by the sunscreen aisle, and had family members who had experienced skin cancer.

“When you combine that with the fact that, as creatives, we spend our lives building other people’s brands, and often not having the amount of agency over the direction of those brands that we’d perhaps like - it presented an opportunity for us to do something for ourselves.”

SLATHER will target men, whilst not excluding other sunscreen wearers. It will also challenge the way other brands market their sunscreens by “worshipping the sun”, Jess says

“The other category norm we’re obviously jarring against is the sun itself. Most ‘sun protection’ brands are about loving the sun. Worshipping the sun. Presenting the sun as the beacon of all that is holy.

“So, the positioning of ‘THE SUN IS NOT YOUR FRIEND’ is both serious and tongue-in-cheek.”

The positioning brings a “degree of sensible aesthetic edge to a category devoid of real feeling and meaning,” the Melbourne-based independent agency says. The brand was launched on TikTok with an animation created in-house and a jingle produced by Production Alley.

The SPF category is difficult to master: tightly-regulated, and tough to formulate. Chemists must balance efficacy with texture, eliminate white-cast (the effect when sunscreen leaves a white tint, even once rubbed in), and avoid greasiness.

Jess agrees the product had to be “easy to put on. Not like slathering on house paint. Because that presents a barrier to use that we’re attempting to overcome. And then, conversely, it couldn’t be a shiny, greasy, oil slick.”

SLATHER doubles as a moisturiser, and is a “premium quality product” whilst not being marketed or priced as premium, Jess adds. The product is being sold direct-to-consumer on slather.com.au for $32.

“We’ve done some work in the category before, and one of the partners in SLATHER has experience in SPF formulation as well. So in terms of regulations and formulation, it wasn’t ‘our first rodeo.’”

The “lofty” goal is to make SLATHER “the most talked about sunscreen brand in the world.”

“When you look at the current state of play - that’s what it has to be. 2 out 3 Australians being treated for skin cancer in their life is a horrifying statistic,” Jess says.

“Just accepting that nearly all of us will have something cut out of us in our lifetime isn’t something we really want to accept. So our goal is to try to counter our collective apathy to skin protection via entertainment and light-heartedness.

“There’s a tension there, given it’s such a serious issue, but that’s also how Australians tend to deal with this kind of thing. By having a laugh and then getting down to business.”