The Campaign

The F.A.F.F. (Fathers Against Facial Foam) campaign, pitted a group of angry fathers against Pond's Facial Foam. Attempting to stop Pond's from making their daughters attractive to young boys, the fathers carried out a series of stunts against their Facial Foam products. This included a TV campaign from F.A.F.F., which disrupted existing Pond's TV advertising, as well as airing their guerilla stunts. A series of protests, event hijackings and publicity stunts (such as running for mayor) were held to raise awareness of F.A.F.F.'s cause. Linked to an official Pond's Facial Foam website for girls, a homemade F.A.F.F. website was also created to allow girls to learn more about the father's as well as enjoy watching their extreme actions.

Success of the Campaign

When the second phase of the campaign was launched, it garnered immediate interest and chatter among the target market of teenage girls in blogs and social networking sites across Thailand. Through independent research the F.A.F.F. campaign increased Pond's image of being better than other facial foam brands to 72% (an increase of approx 10% over the campaign period), while its nearest competitor remained at 63%. As well as this it managed to move from 17.5 value share in April 08 to 19.3 in July 08 following the start of the campaign. The F.A.F.F. campaign also enhanced Pond's brand essence of romance more successfully than previous Pond's commercials in this category. So much so that the client internally promoted the campaign globally. An additional four markets for Unilever's Pond's Facial Foam brand also adopted the campaign, helping the F.A.F.F. movement spread around the world.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

The campaign launched in May 2008 with a very traditional Pond's beauty ad. The campaign initially focused on helping girls with problematic skin achieve a clearer complexion to help them attract boys. The second part of the campaign substantiated the efficacy of the product by showing the extreme reaction fathers had to the product for making their daughters boy magnets. The Father's movement started with a TV campaign that hacked into Pond's commercials across Thailand to announce the birth of a movement. Other TV ads then went on to show examples of their attempts to smash Pond's billboards, blockade Pond's trucks and even hypnotize young girls against the product. A website was alunched along with the TV to provide viewers with a point of interaction with the fathers. At street level the fathers took their movement to shopping malls, cinemas and other places teenage girls would hang out.