The Campaign

Benadryl One wanted to enlighten millennials, who are mostly unaware allergy sufferers, about allergies and the allergens that cause them. It’s hard to make millennials talk about allergies, but it’s easy for them to talk about things that they hate, especially in social media. To start a conversation, the brand channeled that hate to educate them about allergies by turning their colloquial expression of hate into a hashtag: #AllergicAkoSa (translation:#ImAllergicTo). We launched with a twitter persona named @AllergicAlice with her unbranded music video about pet peeves that invited people to tweet using the hashtag. She responded real-time hooking more people into the conversation. After generating interest, Allergic Alice released another video, now educating people about the real causes of allergies and how Benadryl One can help. As she continued to gain more followers, she kept on educating and engaging them with responsive tweets and videos. The campaign got people talking about allergies and Benadryl One.

The Brief

Benadryl wanted educate unaware allergy sufferers of their real condition. The campaign targeted 20-29 year old young working Filipinos who often self-diagnose and mistake their symptoms for the common cold, thus taking the wrong medication for it.

Creative Execution

We used #AllergicAkoSa, millennials’ colloquial expression of hatred, to get into everyday conversations. To kickstart the campaign, we launched an unbranded #AllergicAkoSa music video, featuring a bubbly ranter, Allergic Alice, singing about her pet peeves. We also created a Twitter account, @AllergicAlice, to encourage engagement and participation for the brand and personality. To amplify the video and Twitter account, we used radio to invite everyone to tweet what annoys them using #AllergicAkoSa. After we got people talking, we launched another video where @AllergicAlice revealed the real causes of allergies. She realizes she’s not allergic to windbags, but to dust and pollution; not to public displays of affection, but to flowers; and not to her boyfriend, but to the allergens on his clothes. The video closes with how Benadryl One can help. We continued to engage them on social media, supported by boosted posts, promoted tweets and paid ads on YouTube.

The campaign successfully turned the strategy of using people’s rants into something entertaining and educational. From being off the radar, the campaign successfully got people talking about allergies and Benadryl One. The two online videos on YouTube generated more than 1.7M views, 54% above target. The succeeding videos also generated more than 900,000 views. The popularity of the #AllergicAkoSong part 1 (“Hook”) led to more than 2,000 subscribers for the brand’s channel. Moreover, it generated numerous parodies from fans. This #AllergicAkoSong video was also recognized as the 4th top-viewed ad in the Philippines for 2014 by Google/YouTube. #AllergicAkoSa trended #1 in the Philippines and #4 worldwide during launch day and became the country’s 1st Twitter Business Success Story. The campaign gained 3-5% engagement rate and generated Php6.6M in earned media, both well above the Philippine industry average. The brand’s business grew both in value and volume, +12% and +12.5% respectively.

Millennials never talk about allergies. But they post a lot about things they hate. Benadryl saw this as an opportunity to educate millennials, who are mostly unaware allergy sufferers. The brand channeled that hate to educate them about allergies by turning their expression of hate into a hashtag: #AllergicAkoSa. We launched a Twitter persona – AllergicAlice with a music-video about pet peeves, inviting people to tweet using #AllergicAkoSa. She responded real-time hooking people into the conversation. After generating interest, she released another video, educating people about the causes of allergies. She then kept on engaging them with responsive tweets and videos.