Results and Effectiveness

The campaign was a shining success. The “sun safety” break referenced the cinema ad that had run in the commercial break. It also provided stats and facts about the dangers of sun exposure in the context of the cinema. Tracking revealed that our initiative increased recognition and branding recall by 34% and the sun safety break had the highest recall of any cinema campaign that ran in Australia in 2009. But most importantly we impacted over a third of young Australians in a captive environment with our sun safety experience and this translates into saving thousands of young Australian lives.

Creative Execution

Stopping the film right before it was expected to begin gave us 100% engagement of the audience in 1,000+ cinemas. Just after the trailers had run and right before the movie was about to begin, the lights came up, the screen went black and a man’s voice rang out. “Hey, that ad to do with skin cancer and protecting yourself in five ways was pretty nasty. Did he say 400,000 Australians are diagnosed each year with skin cancer - that’s like 2,000 cinemas like this full of people". Our audience learned about the real facts of skin cancer at a time when they were all ears. At the end of the segment the lights then dimmed and the movie started. At the end of the movie we reinforced our sun-safe message with digital outdoor panels in the foyer, and when people stepped out into the sunshine, we gave them sunscreen.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Our brief from the Australian government was to change perceptions and behaviour of young Australians about the dangers of sun exposure. Research showed that young ‘Aussies’ were disengaged from the skin cancer message. Campaigns in the past had done little to change real behaviour amongst this group. Our challenge was to bring the very real dangers of skin cancer to life in a fresh and engaging way. We ran our (four year old) skin cancer ad, then stopped our young ‘popcorn munchers’ in their tracks just before the movie was to begin. We brought the message to life when they least expected it - in a way that had never been done before. Our idea was simple. We turned the cinema lights up bright – real bright. We brought sunshine into the cinema and interrupted the cinema experience at a time the audience was fully engaged