A four-day beachside activation bringing New Zealand's most concentrated sunscreen to life at one of summer's biggest outdoor events.
Client: Beauty Collective
Brand: Skinnies Sunscreen
Industry: Beauty/Skincare
Campaign: Skinnies Sunscreen
Location: Mt Maunganui
Duration: 5–8 March
Beauty Collective partnered with Destro to introduce Skinnies Sunscreen to a highly engaged outdoor audience at the Volleyball NZ Futures Event in Mount Maunganui. The event was one of the most sun-drenched, active events on the New Zealand summer calendar this year.
Unlike traditional sunscreens, Skinnies is a gel-based, waterless formula that requires significantly less product per application. That made live, in-person sampling critical. Consumers needed to experience the product firsthand to understand and trust the difference.
The goals of the campaign were to:
Skinnies isn't a product you can sell with a shelf description. The gel-based formula feels different to conventional sunscreen, and getting the application right is key to the experience — too much product and consumers walk away with the wrong impression.
Destro Brand Ambassadors needed to be genuinely knowledgeable, able to guide each interaction with confidence, and skilled at educating consumers in a fun, engaging way without it feeling like a lecture.
An additional challenge: Beauty Collective is based in Auckland, and needed a strong, reliable team on the ground in Tauranga. We needed to guarantee quality local talent in a regional market, ready to represent a new brand with depth and authenticity.
This was also Destro's first activation with Beauty Collective and the Skinnies brand, so establishing trust and delivering from day one was crucial.
Destro provided a Team Lead and two Brand Ambassadors, all selected for their ability to connect with a beach crowd and communicate product benefits naturally and confidently.
Given the client was unable to be on-site for the full duration, the Team Lead served as the primary on-ground contact, managing the team, maintaining stock levels, and ensuring the activation ran smoothly across all four days without requiring constant client oversight.
All staff received an in-depth product briefing prior to the event, covering:
Over four days on the main beach at Mount Maunganui, the Destro team ran a multi-touchpoint activation that combined product education with genuine beachside fun.
The activation centred on three core experiences:
Sunscreen Application Station: Brand Ambassadors guided consumers through a hands-on trial of Skinnies, walking them through the application technique and key product benefits. The one-on-one format allowed for real conversations and genuine education rather than passive sampling.
Cornhole 'Play to Win' Game: Consumers competed to win full-sized 35ml Skinnies products, with 5ml sachet samples available for participants who didn't quite make the cut. The game drew crowds, created energy around the stand, and kept engagement high across the full event.
Skinnies Temporary Tattoos: A simple but popular activation element that kept consumers at the stand longer and created shareable, on-brand moments.
Favourable weather across the weekend played a significant role in foot traffic, with both international and local spectators attending the volleyball tournament. The beach setting was a natural fit for the Skinnies brand, and the team made the most of it. All the Destro Brand Ambassadors maintained high energy and strong engagement across all four days.
The activation connected Skinnies with tens of thousands of event-goers across a full summer weekend, delivering strong product trial and brand education in exactly the right environment.
Campaign Highlights
"Overall a great event and I'm super impressed with your agency — I'll definitely be working you into our event plan for the 26/27 summer."
— Beauty Collective
