Everyone in adland is probably familiar with the “Coke challenge”, a Pepsi-inspired blind tasting that aimed to show the merits of one sugary soft drink over another.
And a new public health initiative in Canada has used a similar idea to highlight the deadly dangers of fentanyl-laced cocaine and the importance of drug testing.
The spot’s the work of Toronto-based creative agency The Garden in partnership with DanceSafe, an organisation promoting health and safety within the electronic music community.
According to the data, some 80,000 Americans and Canadians die of drug overdoses each year and increasingly that’s due to dealers cutting the drug with the opioid anaesthesia drug fentanyl.
The campaign, called “Take the coke challenge”, was released to support International Overdose Awareness Day, a global event held annually August 31st to raise awareness of overdoses and reduce the stigma associated with drug use.
Check out the confronting spot below:
Commenting on the campaign, Shane Oglivie, founder of The Garden, said: “We know that the days of ‘just say no’ are long behind us, and that the war on drugs was lost.
“We want to help educate people on harm reduction strategies that can actually make an impact, and shift the public conversation towards practical, evidence-based solutions to the opioid crisis.”
