The Alcohol & Drug Foundation Team With Dee Madigan’s Campaign Edge To Tackle CV-19 Drinking

Alcohol & Drug Foundation (ADF) has launched a new national health campaign with Campaign Edge aiming to tackle COVID-19 drinking.

Funded by the Australian Government, Break the Habit reveals that it takes only around 66 days to form a habit – roughly the same amount of time many Australians spent in lockdown.

It’s a fact most Aussies are unaware of, with a poll commissioned by the ADF showing that fewer than 10 per cent of Australians were able to accurately estimate how long it takes to form a habit.

The survey of 1,000 Australians also revealed nearly one in five Australians wish they had drunk less alcohol during the lockdown and that a similar number, nearly 20 per cent, want to reduce the amount of alcohol they’ve been consuming recently

Targeted at Australians aged 21-51 living in metro regions, the campaign highlights that even small increases to the amount of alcohol you drink can become harder to shift over time. It encourages people to consider their recent drinking patterns, help them recognise any problem signs and what to do to turn them around.

The creative, developed by Campaign Edge, centres around an animated creature representing the ‘little habit’ of drinking more than usual that some Australians picked up during lockdown.

Speaking on the campaign, Campaign Edge Executive Creative Director, Dee Madigan commented: “This is one of those rare and fun times when you are writing an ad for which you are 100 per cent the target market! It was an incredibly good brief from a client who knows the issues and the insights and was able to communicate them to us exceptionally well. We also had great talent direction from Simon ‘Mo’ Macrae and brilliant VFX from Cutting Edge.

“Making people feel bad about themselves isn’t the way to change behaviour.  The creature allows us to focus on the habit rather than the person. The interesting fact about how habits are formed in 66 days makes the ad particularly relevant and it removes the guilt. Frankly, it’s no wonder people came out of COVID drinking too much – God knows, I did!

“It was a balancing act getting the creature right ­– not too hideous but not too cute. Not too hideous because many Australians do enjoy having a few drinks at night ­–, so there is no point pretending it’s not attractive. A really revolting habit at the start of the ad would also have turned the target market off ­– they would have thought ‘that’s not me ­– I wouldn’t have a habit so gross’.

“The idea was to show how a little habit can turn into something that’s actually a bit scary. We also wanted to show how empowering it can feel to put that lid back on the bottle and make the creature go away.”

Also involved in the campaign was Icon Agency.

Matt Thomas, Icon Agency’s Head of Public Relations, said the Campaign Edge TVC used an animated creature to represent the little habit of drinking more than usual that some Australians picked up during lockdown.

“Based on a growing data pool that many Australians increased their alcohol consumption during the coronavirus lockdown, this was an important topic that needed to be approached in a targeted and timely manner,” Thomas said.

“Understanding the ways in which Australians have responded to the pandemic thus far and the impact ongoing uncertainty is having on them was central to developing our behaviour change methodology to support the amplification of this campaign across media relations, influencers, stakeholder amplification and social.

“Our ambition was to reach as many as Australians as possible with a high-impact launch. Leveraging Campaign Edge’s advertising and key campaign insight, we armed ourselves with a media kit jam-packed with video news releases, case study B-roll and extensive new data, pre-empting what media might ask for and understanding the current landscape compromising usual newsroom resources.”

The campaign will continue to roll out the across earned, paid, owned and shared content channels until mid-September with partners Icon, Atomic 212 and The Lab.

CREDITS

Client – Alcohol and Drug Foundation

Head of Marketing and Communications: Cinzia Marrocco

Marketing Manager: Petra Keckeisen

Communications Manager: Kelly Ward

Media Manager: Carmel Green

Digital Marketing specialist: Sakina Saxena

Senior Campaign Coordinator – Rebecca Martinelli

Creative agency – Campaign Edge

ECD/Writer: Dee Madigan

Art Director: Samantha Harley

Managing Director: Stuart Gillies

Account Director: Ari Margossian

Production Company: Edge Studios

Director: Simon ‘Mo’ Macrae

Post Production: Cutting Edge

Digital: Paul Judge, Jayden Anderson

Integration agency – Icon Agency

Strategy and integration lead

Head of Public Relations: Matt Thomas

Media and stakeholder relations

Associate Account Director: Sophia Pellatt

Account Manager: Rebecca Peck

Account Coordinator: Annie McBrearty

Influencer engagement

Account Director: Fiona Miller

Account Executive: Robyn Rigoli

Social Media

Group Account Director: Hazel Tiernan

Creative strategy: Emily Naismith

Junior Account Director: Jo Raine

Senior Designer: Mark Oriondo

Account Executive: Alex Tanner

Media Agency – Atomic 212

Claire Fenner – Managing Director

Rory Heffernan – General Manager

Asier Carazo – Strategy Director

Sarah O’Leary – Head of Client Service

Devon Roberts – Planning & Trading Director

Taylor Suen – Performance Director

Anna Nguyen – Planning & Trading Manager

Elise Pektuzun – Paid Social Media Manager