THE UGLY SIDE OF BEAUTY

TitleTHE UGLY SIDE OF BEAUTY
BrandPEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF ANIMALS (ASIA PACIFIC)
Product / ServiceANIMAL CRUELTY CHARITY
CategoryB04. Non-Corporate
EntrantMcCANN WORLDGROUP SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE
Entrant Company:McCANN WORLDGROUP SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE
PR/Advertising Agency:McCANN WORLDGROUP SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE

Credits

Name Company Position
Farrokh Madon McCann Erickson Singapore Executive Creative Director
Chow Kok Keong McCann Erickson Singapore Creative Director
Vidhi Shah McCann Erickson SIngapore Copywriter
Charmaine Wong McCann Erickson Singapore Producer
Chow Kok Keong McCann Erickson Singapore Typographer
Koh Kin Yee Teo Studio Photographer
Jimmy Leow - Illustrator
Jason Baker People for Ethical Treatment of Animals Asia Pacific Advertiser's Supervisor
Ashley Fruno People for Ethical Treatment of Animals Asia Pacific Advertiser's Supervisor
Gaia Films Post Production
Yellow Box Audio House
www.bigbangfuzz.com Music

The Campaign

Challenge: To show a fashion-crazy audience the ugly side of glamour. Execution: The only thing trendy Asians love more than fashion is a great deal. So our posters featured fictitious fashion products being sold at amazing prices. When the accompanying barcodes were scanned with a smartphone, the shoppers were shown a video of the animal that was killed to create that product, thus revealing the true cost. The videos were voiced by Pamela Anderson and Joaquin Phoenix. Location and Scale: The campaign ran as 12-sheet posters on bus shelters across the country. In just the first 10 days, the barcodes were scanned over 12,000 times and the posters snowballed into a larger campaign with thousands of free impressions, media reports and a significant increase in traffic to the PETA website.

The Brief

The objective of the campaign was to force young, trendy shoppers to take a long, hard look at their own shopping habits, and realise the amount of pain and torture that went into every single animal skin product they buy. The campaign cannot be measured in quantifiable terms because the objective is to change attitudes and behaviours that have been established over the years.

Results

The poster campaign created a buzz at launch, with over 12,000 barcodes being scanned in just the first 10 days. Over the next three months, the posters snowballed into a larger campaign with thousands of free impressions. The story was picked up by some of Singapore’s top newspapers and was written about on famous blogs and pop culture websites, creating an additional buzz for the campaign. Perhaps more importantly, it was mentioned on thousands of Facebook pages, personal blogs and local online forums – all by young, fashion conscious people who formed our target audience. While it is difficult to measure realizations and a change in attitude in absolute numbers, the comments that the campaign attracted on social media websites and blogs are an indication that people have started to think about the significance of their fashion purchases.

Execution

We brought the idea to life by covering bus stops across Singapore with posters of bags, belts, and shoes. Each item had an accompanying barcode, which had to be scanned through a cellphone camera to show the price of the item. However, when the barcodes were scanned, the shoppers were shown a video of the animal that was tortured and killed to create their purchase – and therefore, the ‘true cost’ of what they were about to buy. The videos were voiced by celebrities like Pamela Anderson and Joaquin Phoenix to make them more appealing to trendy, young people.

The Situation

The fashion industry in the Asia-Pacific region is worth over $370 billion dollars. Unfortunately, a significant portion of that money is spent on products made from animal skins. PETA is an organization dedicated to the welfare of animals and one of its objectives is to fight against the use of animal skins in fashion products. While PETA usually tries to tackle this problem with protests and petitions against fashion labels, the effectiveness of those campaigns on the final consumer is questionable. PETA needed a campaign that forced shoppers to rethink their shopping habits.

The Strategy

Our target audience consisted of fashion-conscious shoppers so we decided that the best way to speak to them was to create a simulated shopping experience. We decided to create posters selling fashion accessories at ‘amazing prices’- but when people scanned the accompanying barcodes on the poster to see the prices, they were shown a video of the animal that was tortured to create their purchase, and therefore the real ‘amazing price’.