The Campaign

Experiential marketing is traditionally dominated by FMCG, electronics, automotive and retail categories, heavily skewed by the promotion of new products through trial or shopper marketing campaigns. Due to Australia’s expansive geographical landscape, brand experiences are generally executed in key metro markets and regional areas are therefore not usually exposed to campaigns at an activation level. Government bodies have to date been very traditional in their media approach and usually take a risk averse approach to their marketing campaigns. Understanding that young females are predominately in the online space especially on social platforms, this campaign focuses on using experiential to start a conversation with them and getting them to opt in rather than shouting our message at them. The 2013/14 Australian Connected Consumers report showed that Australian females spend an average of 23 hours each week online and 36% engage with social media platforms daily, with Facebook and Instagram leading the way. According to Nielsen data $1.3 billion was spent on digital advertising in 2013.

Results

Despite the barrage of health warnings surrounding smoking, there is still a ‘cool’ factor amongst young women and positive appearance associations; 'sophisticated', ‘sexy/alluring' and 'adult-like’. They are naive about the physical damage smoking causes and view it as a problem they don’t have to deal with ‘right now’. The Challenge: Encourage young QLD females (16-25 y/o) to give up smoking or deter them from smoking in the first place. The Strategy: In our audience’s vanity driven, selfie-generation world, image is everything and spend on beauty products is high. We showed the long-term affects smoking has on their beauty NOW, telling them “Your future is not pretty”. The Execution: A ‘mock’ beauty bar in prime shopping areas with a team of ‘beauty experts’ lured our audience in for a free makeover. Instead of receiving a beauty consultation our participants received a make-under experiencing the future effect smoking has on their appearance. Special effect artists portrayed the disgusting consequences of long-term smoking through darkened circles under the eyes, stains and pigmentation treatments and revealed their ‘look’ to the shock and disgust of our participants and surrounding audience. To amplify our message brand ambassador Rachel Finch, an Australian beauty pageant titleholder, received a make-under and revealed her smoking future to her social media fans. Popular beauty and fashion vloggers with a target audience of F13-17 were invited to take part in the ‘experiment’, document their experience and share to their communities. A film crew recorded their reactions and created a powerful piece of content seeded online. The vloggers were shocked by the and created content talking about the personal affect the event had. Day 1 generated PR coverage in print, online, radio and television with all major media outlets including The Courier Mail, News.com.au, 97.3FM and Channel 9’s Weekend Today Show.

The experiential approach played on intrigue and shock factor. Our audience was drawn to the content post experience via the social buzz and news stories surrounding our celebrity Brand Ambassador’s make-under and through our influencer outreach program. Four fashion and beauty vloggers with a large fan base consisting of young females 13-24 year olds took part in getting a make-under. They collaborated to create a 90sec hero video which was seeded online in contextually relevant environments. Each vlogger did an individual piece to camera which was housed on the QLD Government YouTube page.

Quantitive: # of Make-unders – 118 # of On-site Conversations - 752 # of Video Views: Views: 130,019 with high retention rate of 61% completed videos. # of Vlogger Conversations - 50 organic conversation (Likes, Comments) PR – Reaching a total of 14.1 million people and earning over $325,000 in media value. Qualitative: Activation Feedback: • It's scary, that's disgusting. I am never going to smoke again • Really, is that what I'm going to look like? I'm quitting! • This is a great campaign. Way too many young people smoke here (Cairns).