Sunnie, the new brand from Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, was born out of a desire to empower Gen Z girls.
Sunnie is a multi-platform, Gen Z-focused brand that exists on social media, in real life, and through community-driven content. It plans to post on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Pinterest. The brand will also host events, release digital zines, and provide custom curriculum for teen girls and their caretakers covering topics from financial literacy to certificate programs. It’s an extension of Hello Sunshine’s original mission to put women at the center of every story.
“It’s designed to feel like a movement—joyful, collaborative, and intentionally different from the always-on, hyper-curated norms of traditional media,” Jennifer Wiener, the EVP of Solar, Hello Sunshine’s in-house agency, told ADWEEK.
Hello Sunshine saw a need and a white space for building a space for Gen Z girls. In addition to a lack of media aimed at Gen Z, Sunnie also hopes to help young women who don’t feel represented by brands or the media.
“Over the last few years, one of the fastest growing audience opportunities has been this youth audience,” said Wiener.
Sunnie in part responds to a void of media and brands directed at teen girls in recent years. In the 1990s and aughts there were dozens of teen magazines addressing every aspect of teen life, but that era ended in 2018 when the final two, Seventeen and Rookie Mag, went out of print.
Today, teen girls engage with culture and advertisers on social media, which can be a dangerous place for them. Sunnie is partly a response to an ask from Hello Sunshine’s community of mothers looking for support and a better environment to raise their daughters in.
“We are intentionally creating experiences that bring girls outside of the digital ecosystem and into environments that create slow spaces for them to explore, lean in, and deepen their engagement,” said Wiener.
Sunnie wants to work with brands
E.l.f. Cosmetics is Hello Sunshine’s anchor partner for Sunnie. Last year, the beauty brand worked with Hello Sunshine to host Reese’s Book Club within E.l.f.’s Roblox environment with Witherspoon’s nieces, Abby James and Draper. The Hello Sunshine experience was E.l.f.’s best performing brand campaign on Roblox, said Kory Marchisotto, CMO of E.l.f. Cosmetics. The beauty brand also extended the campaign with Abby James and Draper to Twitch with more than 175,000 people tuning in.
