Why is this work relevant for Media?

As the pandemic lockdown in Indonesia rolled into months, many of the excitement-starved Indonesian struggled being stuck at home all the time. A new problem rose on social media: BORED TO DEATH, the next pandemic. Quarantweet is a digital campaign by AQUA that utilised different digital channels to create a perspective for young Indonesians who were bored to death while there are doctors and other front liners who are risking their lives. The campaign utilised social media listening, digital video, and social media engagement - and resulted in a movement that flattened the the negativity curve on social media.

Background

Despite being the pioneer and market leader in the bottled water category for the past 47 years, AQUA struggled to make the brand relevant and appealing as the bottled mineral water category turned into a generic commodity. When the pandemic hit, AQUA’s burden doubled. With the majority of the population quickly retreating indoors, bottled mineral water category is one of the first category that quickly felt the impact of the pandemic to their sales. While the rest of the mineral-water brands reacted by shifting their out-of-home consumption proposition into indoor consumption (and cancelling their out-of-home advertisement), AQUA chose not to be trapped in the rat-race of reactive marketing. Instead, it chose to serve a bigger purpose: standing up to provide guidance and goodness in the face of extreme uncertainties as a way to regaining market share and increase penetration in the new reality of life in a pandemic.

Describe the creative idea / insights (30% of vote)

A couple months have passed since the Indonesian government imposed lockdown across the nation due to Covid-19 in hope for flattening the curve. While the nation slowly adapted to living indoors, the younger Generation Z struggled with the situation as they are forced to pause their exciting life outside. After a couple of weeks, a new pandemic was detected on social media: Bored to Death. Many of the younger Indonesians took to social media to complain about their boredom at home. They complain about the things they've missed, and they begin to spread the bad idea of stepping outside. This in turn made others think it's safe to venture outside. In reality, doctors and frontline workers were overwhelmed treating those infected due to the virus. AQUA, who have always believed inspiring goodness through healthy hydration, sets out to flatten the rising curve of negativity by putting things into perspective.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Our audience are the young Indonesians - the Generation Z. As they retreated indoors, their social media usage increased significantly - primarily twitter. For many young social media users, being bored to death was a pandemic on its own – disregarding true danger of the actual pandemic and the sacrifice that front-liners do every day. We realise that we need to reach them on the channel where they most shared their negativity, and use a format that allows us to juxtapose their negativity with the reality that they are forgetting. The content that we created will then be used to spark further conversation, and shift the tone of conversation to be more positive.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

To kick off the idea, we started by conducting social listening on Twitter. We gathered the number of these negative tweets and created a negative curve, totalling up to over 45 thousand negative tweets since the beginning of the lock down. We then curated the most ridiculous "bored to death" tweets and asked over 10 doctors and frontliners to read these bored tweets. We documented their real response, and created our "Quarantweet" video to be shared on Twitter. By juxtaposing the ridiculousness of the tweets with the medical worker's sacrifice and visible fatigue, we hope to make people realise that the pandemic is not over and they need to do their part to help flatten the durve. We launched the Quarantweet video on AQUA's Twitter account, and we also replied those negative tweets to help change their perspectives. After that, we continue to monitor movement of the negativity curve.

List the results (30% of vote)

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).

Please tell us how the brand purpose inspired the work

AQUA have always believed in inspiring goodness through healthy hydration - and goodness becomes more important than ever in the face of an ongoing global pandemic. Just like a drop of water might not felt like much, AQUA realises that one might feel that their negativity might not affect others - but endless wave of negativity can influence others to risk their safety during this pandemic. We set out to inspire Indonesians to choose goodness and see the silver linings of their situation, and to spreading supportive positivity instead of negativity on social media.