Three years in the making. Countless hours of research. One Cannes Lion Bronze award. Reef Relief is the world's first sunscreen designed to feed coral and UV-safe for humans. Developed in collaboration with the innovative brand Stream2Sea, this world-first product is turning the tide on the way we protect both our skin and our oceans..
We've heard your questions...
- Where did this revolutionary idea originate?
- Who were the visionaries behind it?
- What does the future hold?
In this Q&A, meet the creative duo with all the answers: Alex Smith, Senior Copywriter, and Fred Corazza, Senior Art Director— the masterminds behind Reef Relief. This Coral Reef Awareness Week, dive into their journey so far and discover the passion that brought this award-winning concept to life.
- What inspired/How did you come up with the idea for Reef Relief? We're both huge lovers of our ocean, but currently, every time you open the news it seems to be one horror story after another from plastic, pollution to our beautiful reefs dying in only a few years. We looked into a bunch of reef-building and ocean ideas until we fell in love with the idea of an Edible Sunscreen for coral. We thought surely this has been done before, yet after checking again and again and again to see if it exists, we presented the idea to Jon and Ciara and the rest is history.
- Can you summarise the process of bringing Reef Relief to life? Long... to give a full account would be an essay, but in a nutshell, it was a lot of research, finding partners, and learning more about coral and the sunscreen industry. Fortunately, we had an incredible team who were much smarter than us and supported the project since day one.
- How do you apply your industry expertise to this project/undertaking? Honestly, creating a world-first product like Reef Relief was a huge learning curve for us. It wasn't until we got to actually promoting Reef Relief and advertising the project that we felt we were 100% in our comfort zones.
- What has been the highlight/most rewarding part of the journey so far? The most rewarding part was definitely when the results came in from testing proving we were doing some good for an ecosystem that is in desperate need of help.
- What is your long-term vision for Reef Relief? We love that we are the world's first coral-feeding sunscreen, but we hope we're not going to stay the only one. The more people using sunscreens like Reef Relief the better in our eyes.
- What are the 3 biggest lessons you've taken from the journey so far? You can never do enough research. Building partnerships is essential for projects that break out of traditional advertising. Doing projects that take years to go live feels the most rewarding.
- Have there been any moments in the process of creating Reef Relief that took you by surprise? That it wasn't already an available product in the market, for the whole three years we were working on the project, we kept expecting someone else to announce the idea before we did.
- Who have you met along the way that has taught you something or changed your point of view as you created Reef Relief? Dr Michael Sweet, Professor in Molecular Ecology at the University of Derby, and Triona, PHD student at the University of Derby, and Autumn, Formulator and CEO of Stream2Sea, whenever they start talking about coral, you can't help but sit there and be in awe of what they are saying.
Our LinkedIn Inbox is open for any questions or enquiries about Reef Relief.
