Vacation is expanding its partnership with Pepsi. On Wednesday, the beauty brand known for its throwback marketing and scented sunscreens launched a collaborative giveaway of archival Pepsi merchandise and co-branded, vintage-inspired Vacation and Pepsi merch.
To participate, consumers can purchase the cherry cola-flavored lip balm Vacation first launched with Pepsi in February from either Target, TikTok Shop or Vacation’s e-commerce site. Select lip balms will contain a number underneath the cap that corresponds to redeemable merch, in a nod to Pepsi giveaways of the 1990s and early 2000s that similarly contained giveaway codes inside the bottle caps. The giveaway will run from July through September 30, with more than 40,000 lip balms with specially marked caps available throughout the period.
Since its launch in 2021, Vacation has been known for its vintage world-building in its packaging design and marketing. Recreating the Pepsi giveaways was part of the brand ethos of making the lip balms feel like an authentic throwback to the ’90s era, said Roy Fleeman, vp of design at Vacation.
“We always look at things and wonder, ‘How do we make this feel special?’ We’re all about hitting all five senses,” said Fleeman. “When working out the [lip balm] packaging design, it was like, ‘What if we recreate that moment of cracking open a Pepsi during summer?’ If we could have figured out how to make that carbonation hiss, we would have done that, too.”
