How Bondi Sands is measuring marketing success in Australia and abroad

We spoke with Bondi Sands CMO Alexandra Peek and Global Head of Brand & Content Sarah Morrison about their exceptional brand growth story.

If you ever want a glimpse of the ultimate summer experience in Australia, look no further than Bondi Beach. With its white sand and rolling waves, this iconic location encapsulates the quintessential Aussie beach atmosphere.

And if you ever crave that Aussie glow without the harmful effects of UV rays, look no further than the brand Bondi SandsOpens in new tab (trip to the beach optional!)

Inspired by Australia's most iconic beach, Bondi Sands is a leading self tan, suncare, and skincare brand that embodies the Australian beach lifestyle. It brings the bronzed Aussie, healthy glow to consumers worldwide through accessible and easy-to-use products infused with ingredients that nourish the skin.

Making waves in self tan, suncare, skincare, and beyond 🏖️ 🧴

Bondi Sands is the world's #1 self tan brand, but it's also making waves in two major categories: suncare and skincare.

"The way we see Bondi Sands is more than self tanning now. We have self tanning, we have suncare, and we know that customers trust us with their skin. We've built a really loyal customer base, and we have really good engagement with the products we bring through," says Bondi Sands CMO Alexandra PeekOpens in new tab.

"Customers trust that the products we offer are really high quality and also at a good price point."

While Bondi Sands is made in Australia, it started to quickly expand into other markets, and is now available in an impressive 95 countries. As such, the brand is poised to capture a bigger share of the health and beauty market.

Bondi Sands is quickly growing in all directions, from product innovation and expansion, to new markets, to its marketing strategy across owned and earned channels.

Of course, effectively managing that growth requires compelling marketing initiatives along with the right tools for measuring success.

Being the official sunscreen of Australian Open 🎾

Bondi Sands is a brand that goes all in on its convictions, and those instincts have served the business very well.

Case in point: the brand's partnership with the Australian Open (AO), making it the AO's official sunscreen partner. This partnership represented 75% of Bondi Sands' marketing budget for the year, and the team felt that the collaboration made sense, given the brand's positioning.

As Sarah MorrisonOpens in new tab, Bondi Sands' Global Head of Brand and Content, says, "Being the official sunscreen partner was really important to us. We found it was rooted back into our brand purpose of living that Australian lifestyle, loving outdoors, and having a sports lifestyle."

The results show that Bondi Sands absolutely made the right call by teaming up with the Australian Open.

Tracksuit's data shows an 8% uplift in brand awareness, with consideration rising from 17% to 25%. Not only that, Bondi Sands also saw sales triple in the category year over year.

"It's so nice to see and be able to prove that through checks like brand health," adds Sarah.

Knowing it had reliable brand health data to validate its approach, Bondi Sands bet big and won big. Tracksuit's data helped the team track the results of this marketing investment so they could validate their efforts and advocate for putting more budget behind it.

Hitting it big on TikTok 📱

In addition to its partnership with the Australian Open, Bondi Sands is doubling down on digital and social media platforms to broaden its market reach and deepen consumer engagement.

A key focus for Bondi Sands — especially in the self-tan and skincare markets — is TikTok. According to Alexandra, TikTok makes perfect sense for the brand as it strives to engage younger audiences.

"We have enjoyed so much success with suncare, so we began looking for other categories. We see ourselves moving towards being a skin health brand and skincare is that natural next step for us, particularly with that Gen Z and Millennial audience that are skincare obsessed," she explains.

Alexandra adds that engaging with the TikTok community is crucial for brands looking to make an impact in the beauty industry. So, Bondi Sands created an accountOpens in new tab dedicated to skincare.

"You get skincare junkies who just love it and just want to see skincare content. That allowed us to focus solely on the new category, show the real before and afters, and focus on real skin. It was a unique space to fully highlight that."

She continues, "We've experienced some virality with our skincare SKUs. Any beauty customer knows TikTok is where it's at in terms of product discovery and seeing reviews."

The value of Tracksuit across all the above initiatives 👓📈

Between the Australian Open, TikTok, and a host of other marketing projects, Bondi Sands clearly has a lot going on.

And when you have initiatives running in multiple categories, channels, AND continents, brand health can be challenging to measure (let alone communicate).

Fortunately, Bondi Sands uses Tracksuit, which streamlines the process of monitoring and analyzing brand performance across the board.

"Tracksuit is the most user-friendly brand tracking platform. It is designed for the marketer. It gives you the right level of information; you can have it super top-level, or you can further explore and deep-dive into the data easily," remarks Alexandra.

She adds, "As a global business, we want to be able to capture all markets and have a consolidated view of the business. Tracksuit allows us to have that visibility in an effortless way to digest and share with the wider team."

In addition to giving Bondi Sands visibility into essential brand metrics, Tracksuit also makes it easy to relay information to various stakeholders.

As Alexandra puts it, "There's always going to be people that want more information on certain areas, and we can easily do that with a few clicks, or you can send out a more top-level report, and people can understand it."

The bottom line: Tracksuit enables Bondi Sands to manage and communicate its brand's health effectively so it can continue to make big bets — and win.

Looking ahead: Bondi Sands' global focus 🌎

Looking at the horizon, Bondi Sands intends to deepen its foothold in suncare and skincare, particularly in the US and UK.

"There's a huge education opportunity for us in [the US] market in suncare, skincare, and self tanning. We launched there in 2019 and are still in our infancy in that market. Education across every market is key," shares Alexandra.

"The same with suncare: using it every single day rather than just on vacation or on a really hot day. Now, we're getting to a point where we're seeing more people doing it every day, which changes behaviors for bigger audiences. The North American market is a huge opportunity for each category."

Promising things are also happening across the pond. "The UK market is a really exciting one — we're a market leader with our tanning range, and our suncare is taking off there as well. It's an incredible market for us," she adds.

Since Tracksuit began tracking Bondi Sands in the suncare category in the UK the brand has boosted its awareness by an extra ~2.2million humans.

Final words 🙌

At Tracksuit we have the fortune of chatting to some of the world's top marketers, and we know for a fact that the team at Bondi Sands are best-in-class (shout out to you, Alex and Sarah).

Bondi Sands is making big moves in big markets and we can't wait to see the impact marketing will continue to have on their growth story.

As the brand's footprint continues to grow, a tool like Tracksuit becomes even more critical to track and adapt to these dynamic markets.

Learn more about how Tracksuit can help elevate your brand tracking initiatives. Request a demo today!