CANESTEN - THRUSH: THE MUSICAL

Gold Spike

Case Film

Presentation Image

TitleCANESTEN - THRUSH: THE MUSICAL
BrandBAYER
Product / ServiceCANESTEN
CategoryA07. Use of Talent
EntrantPHD Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Idea Creation PHD Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Idea Creation 2 SKETCHSHE SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
Media Placement PHD Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Production SKETCHSHE SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
ANGELA RAPLEY PHD MEDIA DIRECTOR OF CONTENT
SHAE-LEE SHACKLEFORD SKETCHSHE ARTIST
BENNY DAVIS BENNY DAVIS COMPOSER
SKETCHSHE SKETCHSHE ARTIST

The Campaign

Sketchshe are a comedy phenomenon, having amassed 144 million views on their YouTube channel with their now-famous in-car lip-syncing videos. Young women love them, making them the perfect partner to get young women to engage with this highly personal and taboo topic. Our idea was to create a female empowering comedic music video in which SketchSHE would swap their car wheels for airplane wings, taking to the skies as flight attendants aboard SketchSHE Airlines - The world’s most ‘accepting’ airline! Through a ridiculously catchy song, they would reassure passengers that: ‘’No reason for it to be taboo. It’s just a case of thrush in your Coochie Coo!’’. Allowing SketchSHE to produce the content was crucial to the campaign being authentic and credible. From Poonanie to Vajayjay, the girls melodiously take the viewer on a journey through vagina euphemisms, taking the STING – literally - out of the STIGMA of thrush.

Creative Execution

With no creative agency involvement and a small budget, we created an epic 2-minute music video, housed on SketchSHE’s YouTube channel. We then created a 15-second and 6-second cutdown of the content which we programmatically targeted to our audience across TrueView on YouTube, Facebook, as well as other female-targeted environments. These versions also drove further traffic back to the long-form version on YouTube and encouraged people to share. The content was posted by the girls on SketchSHE’s social channels - Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram - to drive further conversation and sharing. Finally, to drive PR, we created and distributed a special SketchSHE Airlines VIP amenity kit which we sent to handpicked Australian influencers and key journalists.

Our key objective was to get people to recall the Canesten brand, so the next time they spoke with a pharmacist they knew what to ask for. Incredibly, we saw Ad recall increase by +52.2% overall and a massive +86.5% across our female 25-34yr target audience. Brand Awareness lifted by 22.9% across our target audience. The video itself also generated some impressive metrics: It had nearly 13million views and achieved 21,065 likes, shares and comments. These results culminated in + 14% sales increase of Canesten thrush cream treatments YOY (April 2018 vs. April 2017) Despite being aimed at the Australian market, the content has been shared, picked up and written about by people all over the world. Best of all people loved the video and appreciated Canesten’s bravery in shaking up the category: ‘’It really made me think thrush wasn't something to be ashamed of. Seriously great job!’’

If you can’t talk about it, sing about it! That was the central idea behind Thrush: The Music Video. A hilarious and brave entertainment piece designed to get women talking about the unlikely topic of common vaginal yeast infections. Making another serious ad about the symptoms of thrush would not cut through. We had to be brave and harness the power of ‘comedy’ to get people to feel affinity with the Canesten brand. With no creative agency involvement, and a small budget, we created an all singing, comedic musical epic. Removing the stigma around thrush and making Aussie women smile.

Women share a lot of things, but when it comes to issues ‘down there’ they’re often all too silent. Our insight was that women would NEVER share a traditional ad about thrush (would you really want your friends to think you had it?) But creating SHAREABILITY was crucial for getting in front of this audience. Our strategy was therefore, to use humor to open the conversation about thrush and drive organic content sharing and discussion. Navigating stringent legal and compliance requirements, our approach was to create an addictive singalong musical number, which would teach women they’re not alone in having the condition. Importantly, it would also remind them that Canesten is their go-to remedy for thrush, and that they should be asking for it by name at the pharmacy counter.

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