Why is this work relevant for Branded Content & Entertainment?

It was a couple of months since Indonesia issued a national lockdown. Many youngsters were struggling to adjust of being stuck at home. Alas, a new problem started to rise, BORED TO DEATH, the next pandemic. Quarantweet is a digital campaign by AQUA, showcasing a film of doctors reading tweets of youngsters who are bored to death stuck at home. Meanwhile these doctors are busy risking their lives to help treat the infected. The film was a refreshing content for these youngsters, an antidote to cure boredom of being stuck at home. A way for people to stay positive.

Background

A couple months have passed since the Indonesian government issued a law for people to stay home due to the pandemic. While many struggled to make this transition from living indoors, the younger generation Z of Indonesians were finding it even harder to fight boredom at home. Thus a new pandemic was rising, Bored To Death. This young generation used Twitter to vent their frustration of boredom, spreading bad ideas of going outside and even breaking the law of staying indoors. Many youngsters were already going out since they couldn't cope with the boredom at home. Meanwhile, doctors and frontline workers were already busy treating those infected due to the virus. AQUA, a water brand that was about sharing goodness to the people wanted to help change this rising curve of negativity into a positive one, so that people can stay safe and stay positive, even while being at home.

Describe the creative idea

AQUA needed to change the perception of these negative bored youngsters. So AQUA created Quarantweet, a Twitter-based campaign that transforms negativity of being bored at home to look at the bright side of being safe at home. We gathered all these negative bored tweets and have frontline workers & doctors read them, created a film of their reactions to show just how ridiculous it is and ironic that these youngsters are busy nagging through Twitter. Meanwhile these doctors are busy trying to fight the pandemic. AQUA shared this video online and on Twitter, the place where all the rants are happening. Through social listening, we even replied negative Tweets and responded using this video. In the end, what Quarantweet helped the younger generation to see a different perspective. To see that being stuck at home isn't so bad at all.

Describe the strategy

To kick off the idea, we started by conducting social listening on Twitter, since it was the biggest platform in Indonesia for youngsters to rant and usually share their inner most feelings. The target audience was generation Z since most of these negative tweets were coming from them. Through social media listening, we gathered the number of these negative tweets and created a negative curve, which was rising from the past couple of months, totalling up to over 45 thousand negative tweets since the beginning of the lock down. To change their perspective, our strategy was simple. We gathered the most ridiculous negative tweets of not wanting to stay at home and showed them to the frontline doctors. Created a video of this and shared it to the public on Twitter as a PSA to open these youngsters eyes on their unnecessary negativity.

Describe the execution

Gathering these negative tweets was the first step. We then curated the most ridiculous "bored to death" tweets and asked over 10 doctors and frontliners who were working to treat those whose infected by COVID-19 to read these bored tweets. We documented this response and created our "Quarantweet" video to be shared on Twitter. Showing people how ridiculous it is to go out, meanwhile these doctors were out there risking their lives to fight the pandemic. We launched the Quarantweet video on AQUA's Twitter account but other than that we replied those negative tweets to help change their perspectives. Through this process, we monitored those negative tweets and weekly updated the effectiveness of this video. The campaign ran from end of May until end of June of 2020.

Describe the outcome

The film worked like an antidote.
Twitter users started to change their perspective and joined our fight by tweeting their positive take on staying at home.
 Within just a few days the film was retweeted over 7,300 times, reaching over 3,9 million twitter users.
This support resulted in to a flattening of the curve and finally it went down from 45,615 to 7,414 tweets. AQUA even became the most loved brand in Indonesia during the pandemic according to SWA magazine (Aug 2020).