The Campaign

We created a story typical to this audience, a group of teens covertly slipping away to spend time together as friends. We show all the typical behaviours and attitudes expected from this audience and load the story and narrative with the expected outcome of rebellious teenagers. The story plays out through a constant state of contrast; reckless behaviour juxtaposes expressions of regret, the exhilaration of running through warm sunset lighting cuts to a pensive gaze in low evening light from a car window and the frantic movement of a handheld camera will contradict the wide eerie pans of a sleepy country town. The outcome of this story is we witness the outcome of teenage reckless behaviour, the loss of life as a result and the burden of guilt amongst these friends as they visit the location on the anniversary of this tragic event.

Creative Execution

To deliver this, we selected environments where they hang out with their mates online we were in, and around the video content they were watching on YouTube, amongst their friends posts on Facebook and around the sports and entertainment content they were consuming across blogs and the web. All delivering custom cuts of the content to suit the environment. We also found a new audience for our content. Before launch we ran it through out content analysis tool ‘Real Eyes’ testing against a panel of people, reading the emotional reaction on their faces. We found that the video didn’t just resonate with young teen boys under 16, it also worked well for Women 35 plus, the Mums of these teen boys. This gave us a 2nd targeting strand, allowing us to reach Mums to speak to their kids empowering them to convey a message of warning that didn’t sound patronizing.

Results: 76% of the teenagers surveyed post campaign said the advert grabbed their attention. 89% said they understood what the advert was saying. 61% acknowledged the advert made them rethink their behaviour towards risks and danger. Source: Insight, April 2016, Post-Campaign Evaluation, Quantitative Online Survey, n=100 per wave, male aged 13-17 living in Queensland. Reach: 577,092 (Over delivery of 9%) Cost per view: 0.12c (Combination of Social Video, and In-Page and In-Stream formats) We also ran a custom audiences study, which we used to optimise across the campaign to make sure we were hitting the right audience with the content, and enhanced creative/calls to action on the custom video player to appeal to our bullseye audience and there behaviours across digital environments.

In the plight to reach out to Australia’s teenage population, we wanted to capture the essence of being young in a raw and relate-able way. The impact of this message relied on believability and shock value. We wanted to capture youth for both its boundless pursuit of adventure and naive recklessness through the juxtaposition of lighting, colour and jarring, moody imagery. Through a constant state of contrast; reckless behaviour juxtaposes expressions of regret, the exhilaration of running through warm sunset light then cutting to a pensive gaze in low evening light from a car window help illustrate this powerful story.

Adolescence is a difficult time in anyone’s life. In rural areas of Queensland, Australia this time involves hidden locations, a place where they are their own masters. This is a time of discovery, rebellion and with hormones boys will undoubtedly try to impress. This right of passage involves teens escaping the heat at water holes that can contain crocs, sharks, snakes and strong currents. We discovered 55% have deliberately ignored warning signs to enter restricted areas and 49% said it was due to peer pressure. We wanted to capture the essence of being young teenager in a raw and engaging way. Taking a stern warning of caution and turning it into a relate-able story, we ingrained a deep sense of consequence. We didn’t want to give them rules, instead pose the notion: ’respect the water like you respect your mates’ Our message: ‘Don’t visit these places for the wrong reason’.