How Davos Klosters Turned a Makeup Tutorial Into a Mountain Running Manifesto
Davos Klosters' "Natural Makeup Tutorial" is a 2019 digital campaign created by Zurich-based agency Bandara that parodies the Instagram beauty-tutorial format to argue that mountain running in Switzerland delivers more authentic results than any cosmetic product.
The campaign operates on a single, clear premise: nature is the best influencer, and the most natural makeup is no makeup at all. Rather than demonstrating foundation, contouring, or filter techniques, it invites viewers to lace up their shoes and run in the mountains of Davos Klosters, positioning sweat and fresh alpine air as the only beauty routine worth following. The format parody is deliberate and structurally precise — it borrows the visual language and step-by-step cadence of a conventional makeup tutorial, then systematically replaces every cosmetic step with an outdoor physical action, arriving at a conclusion that doubles as a destination proposition.
Published in August 2019 in Switzerland and classified by Clapboard as a format parody, the campaign consists of one media asset distributed through digital channels. It was submitted to the Clapboard archive by Daniel Gremli, Co-Founder of Bandara, the agency responsible for the creative work. The campaign sits within the hospitality and tourism industry category and targets leisure travellers for whom physical wellbeing and outdoor authenticity carry genuine appeal. In the Swiss market, where alpine identity is both a cultural given and a competitive tourism asset, the campaign's argument carries particular geographic resonance. Davos Klosters earns a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 for this campaign, reflecting a concept with clear strategic coherence and cultural relevance, offset by the limited scope of a single recorded asset and an absence of verified performance data.
Davos Klosters introduced its "Sports Unlimited" platform in spring 2018, according to Bandara Ch, establishing physical activity and alpine sport as the central pillars of its destination identity. The "Natural Makeup Tutorial" campaign, released in August 2019, extends that platform into cultural commentary, targeting the specific phenomenon of Instagram-driven beauty standards as a foil for the resort's outdoor proposition.
The strategic rationale is grounded in a genuine consumer tension. By 2019, the dominance of heavily filtered and staged social media content had produced a measurable counter-movement oriented around authenticity, wellbeing, and unmediated experience. Davos Klosters and Bandara identified this tension and placed the resort on the credible side of it, arguing that the mountains of Switzerland offer something no beauty product or digital filter can replicate. The campaign positions mountain running, fresh air, and physical exertion not merely as activities but as an alternative beauty philosophy — one with the alpine landscape of Davos Klosters as its natural setting.
In the competitive Swiss mountain resort market, Davos Klosters faces well-resourced rivals including Zermatt, whose Matterhorn identity commands strong international recognition, and St. Moritz, which anchors its positioning in luxury and prestige. Against these competitors, Davos Klosters pursues a strategy built on sport, accessibility, and a broader sense of wellbeing rather than exclusivity alone. The global ski and mountain resort sector recorded approximately 400 million skier visits in the 2018 to 2019 season, representing roughly 14 percent year-on-year growth, according to Hkexnews Hk, underscoring the scale of demand that destination campaigns in Switzerland were competing to capture at the time of the campaign's release. The "Natural Makeup Tutorial" addresses leisure travellers motivated by physical health and genuine outdoor experience, a segment distinct from the luxury-heritage audiences cultivated by Zermatt and St. Moritz, and one well-suited to Davos Klosters' established sports identity.
Bandara constructed the "Natural Makeup Tutorial" around a single structural decision: to execute the campaign entirely within the visual and editorial conventions of an Instagram beauty tutorial, then subvert each convention systematically.
The format parody classification assigned by Clapboard captures this approach precisely. The campaign does not simply argue against filtered beauty culture in the abstract; it inhabits that culture's own grammar — the step-by-step instruction, the close attention to texture and result, the implied promise of transformation — and redirects it toward the act of running in the Swiss mountains. Each stage of a conventional tutorial finds its equivalent in a physical outdoor action, and the finished "look" is the flushed, unfiltered face of someone who has genuinely exercised in alpine air. The rhetorical move is efficient because it meets the audience inside a format they already recognise and trust, before delivering a conclusion that inverts their expectations.
The campaign was published as a single digital asset in Switzerland in August 2019, a timing choice that aligns with peak summer hiking and trail-running season in Davos Klosters. This seasonal anchoring reinforces the creative argument by making the invitation to run in the mountains immediately actionable for the campaign's audience. The digital medium suits the format parody: beauty tutorials are native to digital and social platforms, so the campaign occupies precisely the channels where the phenomenon it critiques lives and circulates.
Production credits for the "Natural Makeup Tutorial" beyond the agency credit for Bandara, Zurich, and the contact credit for Daniel Gremli, Co-Founder of Bandara, are not publicly documented in available sources. The campaign was developed within the broader creative relationship between Bandara and Davos Klosters, which also produced interactive Facebook AR, VR, and three-dimensional motion-sensing activations as part of the "Sports Unlimited" platform released in February 2019, according to bandara.ch.
No verified performance data for the "Natural Makeup Tutorial" campaign is publicly available. No trade press coverage has been documented in sources including Campaign or comparable industry publications, and no award entries or results have been identified in publicly accessible records.
Structural analysis of the campaign nonetheless reveals several attributes that support its effectiveness as a destination marketing communication. The format parody mechanism is self-contained and requires no prior familiarity with Davos Klosters to function; a viewer who encounters the content cold on a social platform can follow its logic entirely within the format it mimics. This lowers the barrier to engagement significantly compared to campaigns that rely on established brand recognition to carry meaning.
The campaign's argument also has genuine longevity. The cultural critique of filtered beauty standards and the counter-positioning of authentic outdoor experience remain active tensions in social media culture well beyond 2019, meaning the creative territory Davos Klosters and Bandara staked out in Switzerland retains relevance. According to Stnet Ch, Switzerland's tourism sector places consistent strategic emphasis on the connection between alpine nature and personal wellbeing, a priority the campaign expresses with unusual directness and wit. The global mountain and ski resort business volume was estimated at USD 13.0 billion in 2019, according to Pdf Euro Savills, indicating the competitive stakes within which a campaign of this kind needed to earn attention. Against that context, a single-asset digital campaign dependent entirely on the strength of its concept carries meaningful risk — and the Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects both the concept's clarity and the execution's constraints.
The Natural Makeup Tutorial is a 2019 digital campaign by Swiss mountain resort Davos Klosters, created by Zurich agency Bandara. It parodies the Instagram beauty-tutorial format to argue that mountain running and fresh alpine air deliver more authentic results than conventional cosmetics. The campaign was published in Switzerland in August 2019 as a single digital asset.
Bandara, a Zurich-based creative agency, produced the Natural Makeup Tutorial for Davos Klosters. The campaign was submitted to the Clapboard archive by Daniel Gremli, Co-Founder of Bandara. It forms part of the broader creative relationship between Bandara and Davos Klosters, which also included the resort's Sports Unlimited platform launched in 2018.
Davos Klosters positioned nature as the best influencer, countering Instagram beauty culture with the argument that sweat and fresh mountain air outperform any cosmetic product. The campaign targets leisure travellers motivated by wellbeing and authenticity, reinforcing the resort's Sports Unlimited identity and differentiating Davos Klosters from competitors such as Zermatt and St. Moritz in Switzerland.
The Natural Makeup Tutorial received a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's clear conceptual coherence and cultural relevance within Swiss tourism and hospitality, balanced against the limited scope of a single recorded media asset and the absence of publicly verified performance data or documented award recognition.
No award entries or wins for the Natural Makeup Tutorial are documented in publicly available sources. No coverage has been identified in trade publications including Campaign or comparable industry press. The campaign is archived on Clapboard, where it is classified as a format parody and evaluated on the basis of its creative and strategic structure.
The Natural Makeup Tutorial extends the Sports Unlimited platform that Davos Klosters introduced in spring 2018, according to bandara.ch and Davos Ch. It combines two consistent themes in the resort's marketing — nature as a source of wellbeing and sport as a core destination identity — and delivers them through a culturally timely critique of filtered social media beauty standards.
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