Skin cancer is up 100 % over the last 20 years in Sweden. And we’re the 3rd most affected country globally. Sweden’s largest pharmacy asked us to help them break the trend by teaching Swedes sun safety.

Logic says “let’s sell boatloads of sunscreen with a great campaign”. But sunscreen alone isn’t enough protection. Instead, we had to inspire Swedes to spend their summer holiday out of the sun and in the shade (the best sun protection). Our objective was to raise awareness of the unhealthy Swedish sun habits and inspire to new and healthy ways of enjoying the Swedish summer holidays.

So, when Swedes were planning their summer vacation trips we opened a brand-new travel agency and made it the world's most skin-friendly by only selling trips to Sweden’s least sunny destinations. It was an unlikely success and sold out in 24 hours.

Sweden is a sun-depraved country. Whenever the sun is out Swedes are out working on a tan. This has led to high numbers of skin cancer and an increase of the disease by 100 % over the last twenty years.


To break the trend, Sweden's largest pharmacy Apotek Hjärtat wanted to teach Swedes about sun safety and help create new healthy sun habits for the summer. Instead of trying to sell sunscreen, they decided to promote the best sunscreen in the world - the shade - by opening the world's most skin-friendly travel agency selling trips to the least sun-kissed places in Sweden.

Normally a pharmacy would like to sell sunscreen and earn money during the summer. But Apotek Hjärtat are in the business of helping people stay healthy, not only making money. In light of that position, we decided to not push sunscreen and cash in on a skin cancer scare. Instead, we chose to teach Swedes sun safety by promoting the best sun protection there is – the shade.

From there the strategy became simple.

Every summer Swedes get 4-5 weeks off work to enjoy summer. They usually spend it taking a holiday in the sun. Our strategy was to inspire Swedes about to go on holiday to spend their summer in the shade and not in the scorching summer sun.

That’s why we opened a brand-new travel agency selling trips to the least sunniest places in Sweden.

To identify what destinations we should sell trips to, we hired meteorologists to identify the 10 least historically sunny places in Sweden. And then we opened a brand-new travel agency called Shadecation that gave away trips to these destinations in a collaboration with the Swedish Cancer Society.

To spread the word, we advertised the newly opened travel agency in 400 pharmacies and by OOH and online ads on Youtube and Meta. But we didn’t stop there. We also sent travel catalogues to influencers and handed them out to customers in-store and published travel recommendations on the travel agency’s site once we sold out.

And to create PR we broke down local skin cancer data and pitched them locally all over Sweden.

Our KPIs were to gain reach and raise awareness of the skin cancer situation in Sweden. In a country of 10 million people, we managed to earn a reach of 23,2 million.

The response rate was awesome. We sold out in 24 hours, which meant that our agency stopped selling trips and started providing recommendations on shady destinations in Sweden.

The campaign helped us talk about all our talking points in most of Sweden’s top-tier media.

And hopefully, we’ve managed to help people stay healthy in the sun, but only time will tell…