Drunken Mistakes
Case Summary
Underage drinking during the Halloween weekend in Sweden has exploded. And the ones to blame are older siblings who are dealing alcohol to their younger peers regularly. We managed to make them reflect about their own, and their siblings’ alcohol consumption by disrupting their media and social media channels with real, self experienced stories.
Note: Some texts/information are in Swedish.
Case film
Client
Systembolaget (the Swedish alcohol retailing monopoly)
Background
Underage drinking during the Halloween weekend in Sweden has exploded. Research shown that the ones to blames are the older siblings dealing alcohol to their younger peers. Data showed that 7 out of 10 youths wouldn’t drink alcohol if they didn’t get it from someone they knew well, e.g an older sibling or friend. The Swedish alcohol retailing monopoly, Systembolaget works regularly with initiatives aimed to educate and decrease underage drinking. Together we decided to stop this unfortunate trend by launching the ‘Drunken mistakes’ campaign.
Creative idea
We created a content based social media based platform, ‘Drunken Mistakes’ (‘Fyllemisstag’ in Swedish), from which we encouraged the target group to share their own stories about mistakes they did while being drunk as a minor, as well as taking part of other people’s experiences. These stories were published on a dedicated Instagram account, days before Halloween. Bloggers acted as ambassadors for the campaign by sharing their own stories and gathering new ones, from the target group, via Snapchat and their blogs. The discussion that followed both in social and traditional media channels generated authentic content written by the target group for the target group.
Strategy
Our main challenge was to find a way to reach and engage older siblings since they were the core to our main problem - a gateway to alcohol. To reach and engage a rather ignorant target group with a built-in adblock, we decided to go all emotional. The main insights for this were:
Anxiety: Alcohol makes us do things we often regret. Embarrassment and anxiety are perhaps some of the milder effects of alcohol, but they are also what makes people hesitate before they repeat the same procedure again. One always learn something from ones mistakes.
Older siblings: Whether they want it or not, older siblings turn in to role models in the eyes of their younger family members by default.
So, the strategy was to remind older siblings in their early 20s of their own drunken mistakes, in order for them to think twice before dealing alcohol to minors.
Execution
Through a survey, we collected hundreds of real ‘drunken mistakes’, experienced and told by young adults all over the country. These stories were published on a dedicated Instagram account, days before Halloween. Bloggers and influencers acted as ambassadors for the campaign by sharing their own stories and gathering new ones via Snapchat and their blogs. The discussion that followed generated authentic content written by the target group.
By disrupting their otherwise polished social media feed with a serious narrative we managed to get a serious message across to this target group which is generally hard to reach.
Results
- By disrupting their otherwise polished social media feed with a serious narrative we managed to get a serious message across to this target group which is generally hard to reach.
-The campaign generated authentic content written by the target group who really engaged in the question of dealing alcohol
- We managed to get the target group to reflect about their alcohol consumption in general
-Through traditional and social media, we reached 17 million people