Results and Effectiveness

The poster campaign created a buzz, with over 12000 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, blogs and pop culture websites, creating an additional buzz for the campaign. While it is difficult to measure 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.

Creative Execution

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 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.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

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. Our target audience consisted of young fashion-conscious shoppers and the objective of the campaign was to force them to take a long, hard look at their own shopping habits, and realise the amount of pain and torture that goes into every single animal skin product they buy. Since our target audience comprised of young, trendy shoppers we decided that the best way to speak to them was to create a simulated shopping experience.