Vacation, the retro sunscreen brand, is running a second act on its Pepsi collaboration by recreating the cap-code giveaways Pepsi used in the 1990s and 2000s, according to Glossy. The move extends a partnership that began with a co-branded product drop — Vacation Classic Whip SPF 30 in Pepsi Blue packaging — and converts the momentum from that initial sell-through into a retention mechanism for customers who already bought.
The giveaway works like the original Pepsi promotion: buyers find codes under the cap of their Vacation Pepsi product and enter online for prizes. Vacation is offering Pepsi-themed merchandise, including branded beach towels, coolers, and apparel. The mechanic is low-friction — no purchase required beyond the original product — and it gives the brand a reason to contact buyers again after the transaction closes.
The underlying mechanism is sequential engagement on a single SKU. Most brand collaborations end at checkout. The product ships, the Instagram post runs its cycle, and attention disperses. Vacation is treating the collaboration as a two-stage campaign: the drop creates urgency and moves inventory, then the giveaway re-engages the same cohort and trains them to check back. The cap code is a forcing function — it turns the product into a ticket and the customer into a participant. That shifts the brand relationship from transactional (bought sunscreen) to participatory (playing a game, waiting for a result, talking about it). The cost to Vacation is the prize pool and the logistics of the code redemption system. The return is sustained attention from buyers who are already brand-warm and a second content wave when winners post.
Nostalgia is the framing, but the real work is in the structure. Vacation is not just referencing the '90s — it is copying the exact promotion format that Pepsi used to drive repeat purchase ("buy another bottle to get another code"). For a beauty brand, that repeat mechanic does not apply the same way — sunscreen replenishment is slower — but the cap code keeps the collaboration alive in the customer's field of view while they use the product. Every application is a reminder that they have a code to enter.
A small physical-product brand can run the same play without a Pepsi. Pick a product with a natural collaboration angle — a candle brand partners with a local coffee roaster, a soap maker works with a regional brewery. Design the first product as the marquee item: co-branded packaging, limited quantity, announced launch date. Sell it as a drop. Then, one week after fulfillment starts, announce the second stage: every box contains a scratch-off code (printed stickers, under $0.08 each from Sticker Mule or similar), and codes unlock entries for a prize tier. Tier the prizes: one grand prize (a bundle worth $200-$300 retail, co-branded with the partner), five mid-tier prizes ($40-$60 each), and fifty small prizes (stickers, samples, digital downloads — cost under $5 each). Total spend on prizes: under $800. Run the entry period for three weeks. Email every buyer on day seven ("did you find your code?"), day fourteen ("one week left"), and day twenty ("winners announced tomorrow"). Use a simple form (Typeform, Google Forms) to collect codes. Announce winners publicly and ask them to post a photo with their prize. The mechanics cost less than a paid Instagram placement and they re-engage your entire buyer file.
The pattern here is not nostalgia for its own sake. It is using a familiar promotion structure to build a second touchpoint into a product that was sold as a one-time event. Vacation is teaching buyers to expect more than the transaction, and they are doing it with a mechanic that Pepsi already spent millions proving. Smaller brands do not need the IP — they need the sequence.
The takeaway
Run a giveaway after the collab sells through — turn the product into a ticket and the buyer into a participant.
Two hundred brands. Eight months on the desk. $0.003 an impression.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — imprinting on real authorized stock for Nike, YETI, Patagonia, The North Face, Carhartt, Stanley, Peter Millar, TUMI, Montblanc, Moleskine, Waterford, and 190 more. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign: The Stash Edge, Markets Edge, Sports Edge, Voyage Edge, Black's Edge, House Edge, the Article Engine, Ramen, and Fending.
$0.003per impression · vs ~$0.007 digital CPM
8 monthson the desk · vs 0.8s for a digital ad
200+authorized brands · Nike · YETI · Patagonia
9 deskspublishing daily · since 1997
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori Press · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.