303 GOES ON BINGE DRINKING CAMPAIGN
303 Sydney has created a national binge drinking campaign called “Don’t turn a night out into a nightmare.”
The campaign has hit national TV screens and will be highly visible in press, outdoor, youth magazines and on line. The campaign, designed to shock young drinkers, highlights the potential dangers of binge drinking and the serious long term consequences that can result.
The campaign highlights the fact that four people aged under 25 die after alcohol-related incidents in an average week, while 70 are hospitalised. The campaign launches as schoolies week celebrations got underway in party spots on the Gold Coast, at Lorne in Victoria and Byron Bay.
The campaign is part of the $53 million initiative outlined by Kevin Rudd in March this year. Creative team was Bryan Dennis, Derrick Kim and Julian Watt with direction from Steve Rogers at Revolver.
303 have also recently launched the national Better Health campaign that is designed to combat obesity. The “How do you measure up?” campaign is spear headed by a national TV campaign which features an aging and increasingly heavy man walking along a tape measure. The campaign prompts people to review their own behaviour and provides positive steps that can be taken to better health.
44 Comments
brilliant treatment – great work
Don’t know about some of the press.
Telling a young bloke that if he goes out and gets pissed with his mates he might end up nailing a girl in someone’s front yard, and have pictures to prove, is more of an encouragement than a threat.
Shock campaigns aimed at youth don’t work. They just don’t. But politicians like to make stuff so they can point to it and say “see – we’re doing something!! Look!!”
But any agency who entered into the pitch and was foolish enough to tell them the truth wouldn’t have gotten past stage one.
So these campaigns continue to get made.
Seen it all before – it won’t (unfortunately) make a bit of diiference
Apparently Harvey Norman ads don’t work either. Go figure.
Early to mid next year, a new anti-smoking campaign aimed at roughly the same target market will be launched. It won’t be using the same scare/shock tactics that all of these other tired awareness campaigns do. Instead, it will communicate to the market in a way that they’ll respond to (positively) and won’t make them shut down as soon as they see/hear it. That’s a good thing when it comes to important messages like these actually being listened to and remembered by the people they’re designed to help.
Stay tuned.
Sally you’ll be happy to know the pinkie campaign was a first to buck that trend and they were a great success, however it did take the RTA 4 yrs to buy it.
Otherwise I think these are great. Part of me wishes they were shot on a wider angle so I can see more of what’s actually going on, but thats not a bad thing. They get me in, even after several views.
Ben, could you post a link to the press?
cheers!
Kids go out have a great time then get pissed and something bad happens. This kind of innovative original thinking will have a huge impact for sure.
Don’t turn a night out into a nightmare.
Instead…do what?
Stay home? Drink less? Look both ways? Don’t lie to mum and dad? Buy a wii?
The line is fine and all, but what’s the take-out?
The one where the kid gets hit by a car and was filmed on a phone was better.
Kids go out have a great time then get pissed and build a BOAT. Now this kind of innovative original thinking will have a huge impact for sure.
What’s the insight? Something bad might happen? Not compelling. Still, well directed.
I get pissed and bone chicks in front yards of parties all the time, did it at the last agency christmas party, doesn’t give me nightmares.
Ben
9.36 check out http://www.drinkingnightmare.gov.au under campaign materials – it’s under print and it’s the party bushes print that I was referring to.
Dear Mr Rudd,
Recently I saw a shocking campaign about youth binge drinking that you approved. I know how personally involved with this fight you are, so I’ve decided to address this letter to you.
In the campaign, one of the executions state “One in two Australians aged 15-17 who get drunk will do something they regret.”
It’s an appalling statistic, so I’ve come up with a 10 point plan to counter this by 2020.
1. Tackle the national obesity epidemic. While we can’t all be Skinny Blondes, we all know how alcohol can affect eyesight temporarily. We need to do all we can to minimise the regrets these kids may face.
2. Put Clearasil on the national PBS scheme. No-one wants to be known as the kid that pashed the spotty crim-ball behind the bushes in the park.
3. Ban kebab shops and McDonalds from being open past 9pm. It’s hard enough to study the next day without taking a 30 minute toilet break during exams.
4. Ban digital camera’s and webcams from teenagers. Throwing up is bad enough. Throwing up all over the internet is humiliating.
5. Ban the use of glass at teenage house parties. The new initiative works great in pubs, so let’s provide plastic bottle alternatives to alco-pops and enforce free plastic cup giveaways with spirits.
6. Legalise Marijuana for 15-17 year old’s. Kids fall asleep, are less social and if they do something they regret short term memory loss will take care of that.
7. Place public confessional booths on every street corner. That way if they do something they regret, a priest can absolve them instantly.
8. Host a “National Sorry Day” so teenage kids can apologise for all the regrets they have.
9. Give police powers to use those memory wiper sticks from Men in Black on 15-17 year olds nation wide.
10. Encourage frank discussion from parents to teenagers about dealing with regrets, in particular, unplanned pregnancies.
I hope you find these suggestions useful and can form a committee to organise a committee to implement these changes by 2020.
Yours sincerely,
The Kevin Rudd Fan Club.
Shame-I think Julian is a brilliant creative but this work falls short of his abilities i am sorry to say. The supers are up for too short a length of time as well-you do not have time to read them.
it’s a good idea and well directed but who remembers this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AihJ-JGTmsA
Putting aside whether the fundamental strategy is correct, the thing that lets this spot down for me is the POV treatment. I can understand why they did it, and hear them rationalising it to the client “they’ll put themselves into the scenario”. But it simply weakens the impact. When the boy gets “hit” by a car, I just don’t feel it. Likewise , because we can’t see the girl, the embarassment, humilation is lost.
Ermmm… wasn’t the exact same ad done out of the UK last year; but shot from mobile phone camera’s pov?
On to you.
C’mon guys,its hardly fresh. Shock therapy just doesn’t hack it, ‘pinkie’ is a great example of what can be done when creatives don’t rely on lazy thinking.
The problem with these strategies/ads is that they are totally one-sided. Everyone knows that going out and getting pissed often results in a great night. Most of the best nights I’ve ever had have been on the piss, I think. I can’t actually remember.
Scare tactics and the like just don’t wash. It’s like warning people not to fly planes because there is a risk. Sure, people die horribly in plane crashes but most people travel to otherwise inaccessible places and have a fantastic time.
Stop telling people what to think. Stop skewing the risks wildly to the negative. Relax. Most of the time in life, things work out OK. Get out there. Have fun. Experience everything. Live life. Have no fear.
Based on the media’s portrayal of the world, right now if you fly Qantas to Indonesia, have a few beers, swim at an beach that isn’t patrolled and have then have unprotected sex after eating a chocolate bar, you have a 98 per cent chance of dying.
It’s bullshit. It’s all just people with their own set of values and agendas (built on fucken fear and regret) trying to control how you live your life.
Besides, what the fuck is binge drinking? Isn’t it just getting pissed? It’s rubbish. Whenever you want to get people worried about something, give it a new, catchy name.
How embarrassing that this wowserish crap found an ad agency to spruik it. I thought we were a rebellious,coke-snorting, go fuck yourself, industry. How sad.
Thank you for your time. I feel much better. Now, where’s my fucken beer.
To 9:30
that’s genius
cheers
I thought it was pretty lame until I showed it to my son who though it was reasonably sick.
good for the reel but
I expect a lot better from 303. Shocking, yes. Client led, yes. Poor chaps.
My thing is – and 303 I’m not dissing your effort – anything that comes from the government is instantly discounted as bullshit. So the more ‘this is your brain. this is your brain on drugs’ 60s style fried egg the approach is, the more people will get their backs up and it might have a converse effect.
The government lies to us on a daily basis. Anything with their logo on the end doesn’t work.
If it was an honest, frank approach I think it would work better. One I really like was saatchi’s anti drink drive campaign ‘most nights you won’t get caught. but you could end up in an accident’ resonates far more to me, someone who’s lost 6 friends through separate drink / drug driving related instances in a small community.
kid’s aren’t dipshits with buttons you can push. they need to be given more credit than that. ok you’re going to drink. fine. but check out this guy that started drinking at 15 and now finds it hard to get work. etc.
as much as i hate it, testimonials would have worked better.
-END RANT-
These spots are not shocking – they are placid, unemotional and uninformed -who cares about the characters you can’t even see the faces. The punch up at the Manly cab rank on Saturday night was more meaningful.
Looks very close to the campaign Gallery had already done for binge drinking in Queensland – http://www.everydrinkcounts.qld.gov.au/campaign.html
An impossible brief. No idea will work. Kids are too insecure and genetically predisposed to live in the moment. This campaign is a total waste of time and money. The cash would have been far better spent as donations to hospital trauma centres, rape crisis centres and police force patrols. Everyone who survives their youth is merely lucky. I and everyone I know could have died as a result of a mixture of piss and stupidity in our teens and twenties. Hey government. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s scary. It’s sad. But it’s also true.
I showed it to my son as well and he laughed. This is lazy and obvious and a complete waste of an amazing opportunity to do something brilliant and breakthrough for a problem that is not just bound by Aussie Oi Oi Oi borders.
Don’t blame the Government…
I think you’ll find the print referred to above is aimed at girls, not blokes.
It’s certainly a very pitch-friendly campaign. I can see how they won the business.
Is this a first? An intelligent, witty discourse about a well-meaning, but ultimately flawed ad about kids, doing what they’ve always done and always will do, getting pissed.
7.11, no doubt it is, but the problem is blokes will see it too and think “if I get pissed with my mates I might get a root’, so the whole campaign falls down on their side of the fence, and that can’t be good.
The kids look like a cross between summer heights high and the wedge.
For all those people who think this ad won’t work:
I am a 21yo male, and the conversations floating around about this ad are better than most of the other attempts at getting my generation to ease up on the piss. I’m playing Switzerland on this on and not agreeing or disagreeing, but I don’t think anyone here over the age of 25 has a right say whether it does or doesn’t work, because clearly the target market are talking about it.
All we can do is wait and see.
Nik, the ‘target market’ is mums and dads as the government want to be seen to be tackling this huge issue that is so bad now. We never went out and got pissed, did we?
One thing is for sure, given the huge money allocated to researching these things, at the end of the campaign some research company is going to look after the government and say how bloody well this all worked.
Nik.
How can you sit on the fence and at the same time say I’m wrong?
Just because the target audience (based on your pretty small sample size, no doubt) is talking about the work does not mean it will be effective.
And just because I am not within the target doesn’t mean I can’t conceive of ideas that will resonate with sub 25s.
JK Rowling ain’t 10-years-old either.
I also reckon at 21 there are a heap of life experiences you should be getting rather than hanging out with us wankers.
Nik – you are 21 and have not worked on govt business. It’s not about whether it works or not it’s about being re-elected.
Nik, I agree with you. Old, bitter creatives bitching about a campaign they can’t understand.
I’m 21 too, but I’m not going to sit on the fence. I find this campaign powerful and, while it won’t stop me from getting pissed now and then, it’s at least made me aware of what can happen (I didn’t know those stats!). So, yes, I’ll definitely be more careful on nights out.
3:31.
Only juniors comment on this blog. That’s why it goes so quiet around Cannes time.
Ah, takes me back to my youth.
Don’t mind the line but the radio is pissweak. The only thing wasted here is the opportunity. If you don’t have a wide enough talent pool in Perth that all your voice over artists don’t sound like the same guy, cast the net wider. We live in a wonderful age of technology where you can record people in other states don’t you know? The least they could have done was have a female cop. The most they could have done was write an engaging ad.
He must be quite a big boy by now, 10:43
The girl taking her knickers off reminds me of the last MAMMOTH MAMMOTH gig I went too, woo!
MAMMOTH MAMMOTH @ the Tote this weekend.
I think I’ll get hammered and go see them.