People nowadays are more aware of the importance of wearing sunscreen. Nevertheless, the number of skin cancer cases in Brazil keeps increasing. One of the main reasons is because most people forget to apply sunscreen on some parts of the body, only finding out afterwards that they were unprotected - when the skin gets sunburnt.

Considering that 2019 would have one of the hottest summers of the last several years, NIVEA - the number one sunscreen brand in the world - wanted to address that issue and, once again, to find a creative way of helping people enjoy the sunshine while minimizing the damage that UV rays can cause.

NIVEA Sun is all about protection. The brand has made numerous campaigns and promoted ideas to raise awareness on the importance of protecting the skin. This time, they wanted to talk not only about the importance of applying sunscreen, but also about the importance of applying it correctly, a problem seldom discussed. That’s the insight behind the NIVEA Sun Binoculars.

The NIVEA Sun Binoculars combine a set of filters, a zoom lens, a modified camera and a VR headset with an app (developed exclusively for the project) that made color adjustments in real time. The final result – an image that shows clearly which areas of the skin are protected with sunscreen and which aren’t - is shown automatically on the Binoculars display.

With that, we were able to detect and approach beachgoers who weren’t fully protected, offering them NIVEA Sun to protect the areas that didn’t have sunscreen on.

After creating the technology and doing the activations, we gathered enough data to create a platform that shows on which areas of the skin people forget to apply sunscreen most commonly. The data is displayed in an intuitive way and can be filtered by age, gender, weather and even activity, like playing sports or sunbathing. The main goal of the website is to raise awareness among beachgoers on the importance of protecting the skin correctly.

After developing and testing the Binoculars for a few months, it was time to take it to the beaches. There, we built an observatory, so our staff could have a good view of the beach. When our promoter using the Binoculars spotted a beachgoer with parts of the skin unprotected, the Binoculars sent an image to the promoters on the sand. These promoters then approached the beachgoer, offering NIVEA Sun.

In the summer of 2019, NIVEA took the Binoculars to five of Brazil’s largest beaches, approaching beachgoers and gathering enough data to create a website where everyone can learn which body parts are forgotten most commonly, also filtering the data by age, gender, location and activity. The goal of the website is to work as an educational tool for beachgoers.

The campaign addresses a problem that is not discussed that often: the fact that people don’t apply sunscreen correctly.

Until the moment of this subscription, the Binoculars have been used on 7 different beaches: Ipanema, Leblon and Copacabana, in Rio de Janeiro, and Maresias, Santos, Guarujá and Praia Grande, in São Paulo, helping more than a thousand beachgoers who forgot to apply sunscreen on some part of their body. The online video explaining the technology and activations had 38% more impressions than planned and 129% more complete views than expected.

People approached during the activations were positively surprised, and happily applied sunscreen on their unprotected body parts.

The idea also reinforced NIVEA’s image as a caring, educational and innovative brand.