Case Study: How QLD Gov and MediaCom’s mock beauty bar deterred QLD females from smoking

Exclusive Case Study – Your Future’s Not Pretty was a highly successful anti-smoking campaign targeting young females in Queensland and it was the Queensland Government’s first ever experiential marketing campaign.

The challenge was to encourage young image conscious Queensland females (16-25 y/o) to give up smoking or deter them from smoking in the first place. The quit smoking campaign had the shock factor required to build a lot of awareness of a serious issue amongst a hard to reach audience and it led to a lot of conversations about giving up smoking.

Introduction:

Despite the barrage of health warnings surrounding smoking, there is still a “cool” factor about lighting up particularly amongst a growing number of young women. They are influenced by various positive appearance associations, including “sophisticated”, “sexy/alluring” and “grown-up”. This young female group is truly naive about the physical damage smoking causes and many view it as a problem they don’t have to deal with right now.

Government bodies have to date been very traditional in their media approach and usually take a risk averse approach to their marketing campaigns and as a result experiential marketing is rarely if never used. Traditionally experiential is used by FMCG, electronics, automotive and retail categories, heavily skewed by the promotion of new products through trial or shopper marketing campaigns.

Understanding that young females are predominately in the online space especially on social platforms, this campaign focuses on using experiential to start a conversation with them and getting them to opt in rather than shouting a cautionary message at them.

The 2013/14 Australian Connected Consumers report showed that Australian females spend an average of 23 hours each week online and 36% engage with social media platforms daily, with Facebook and Instagram dominating.

Objectives:

The experiential approach for this campaign needed to play on intrigue and shock factor. The audience should be drawn to the content post experience via the social buzz and news stories surrounding the celebrity brand ambassador’s make-under and through the influencer outreach program.

Four fashion and beauty vloggers with a large fan base consisting of young females 13-24 year olds took part in getting a “make-under”.  They collaborated to create a 90sec “hero” video, which was seeded online in contextually relevant environments.  Each vlogger did an individual piece to camera too, which was hosted on the Queensland Government YouTube page. 

The challenge was to encourage young Queensland females (16-25 y/o) to give up smoking or deter them from smoking in the first place.

In the audience’s vanity driven, narcissistic, selfie-obsessed world, image is everything and spending on beauty products is high. The campaign needed to show them the long-term effects smoking has on their beauty NOW, telling them “Your future is not pretty”.

Campaign:

A “mock” beauty bar in prime shopping areas with a team of beauty experts lured our audience in with the offer of a free makeover. Instead of receiving a beauty consultation our participants received a “make-under” experiencing the future effect smoking has on their appearance.

Special effect artists portrayed the disgusting consequences of long-term smoking through darkened circles under the eyes, stains and pigmentation treatments and revealed the results to the shock and disgust of our participants and surrounding audience.

To amplify the message brand ambassador Rachel Finch, an Australian beauty pageant titleholder, also received a make-under and revealed her smoking future to her social media fans.

Popular beauty and fashion vloggers with a target audience of F13-17 were invited to take part in the “experiment’, document their experience and share to their communities.  A film crew recorded their reactions and created a powerful piece of content, which was then seeded online.

Results:

The vloggers were shocked by the results and created content talking about the personal effect the event had on them. Day one generated PR coverage in print, online, radio and television with all major media outlets featuring the story, including The Courier Mail, News.com.au, 97.3FM and Channel 9’s Weekend Today Show.

The overall results from the Queensland Government’s first experiential campaign were phenomenal, including:

Quantative:

• 118 make-unders
• 752 on-site conversations
• 130,019 video views, with a high retention rate of 61% completed videos
• 50 organic vlogger conversations (likes or comments)
• The PR reached a total of 14.1 million people and represented over $325,000 in media value.

Qualitative:

The activation feedback included:

• “It’s scary, that’s disgusting. I am never going to smoke again.”
• “Really, is that what I’m going to look like? I’m quitting!”
• “This is a great campaign. Way too many young people smoke here.”