The Campaign

Drink Driving is a big problem in New Zealand, particularly with young Maori guys. When they’re out partying with their mates, the last thing they want to do is to kill the vibe by telling a mate not to drive home drunk. We needed them to speak up regardless of the social consequences. The problem is, traditional ‘blood & guts’ style ads have no impact on this target audience. We decided to tackle the issue with ‘Ghost Chips’. The first ever NZ anti-drink driving campaign with a positive message that portrayed the audience in a cool, aspirational way. We used humour to break through and gave our audience the tools and catchphrases they needed to help them speak up at the moment of truth.

Success of the Campaign

Over 2 million views on YouTube for a country of 4.8 million. #1 Most viewed video in NZ for the month. #1 Top favorited for the month in NZ. #1 Top rated video for the month in NZ. #1 Education video of all time in NZ. Front page news in NZ. Hotly debated topic on social media, forums and blogs. Over 175 Facebook Pages based on individual lines were spontaneously created. One Page alone had over 70 000 members. The ad resulted in the biggest NZ meme of the year. Countless YouTube mashups and email memes were created.

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

Ghost Chips launched as a TV spot with press and outdoor support. But it was also a social media activation campaign. With no paid digital media, PR or viral seeding it leveraged a powerful story that was designed to start conversation online. Knowing our target market were active social media participants, we laced the content with potential catch-phrases and mashability. Then we simply put the content on YouTube. It was up to the audience to find and then share amongst their peers.