Our Watch, a not-for-profit organisation that is helping end violence against women, has launched ‘It Feels Like the End of the World’, through its youth initiative, The Line. It is a new behaviour change campaign developed with Clemenger BBDO, an Omnicom Oceania agency, that is shaped by an evidence base and direct co-design with young people.
The attitudes that can lead to disrespect and control in adult relationships are often formed in adolescence. But the emotions beneath them – jealousy, fear of rejection and anger – arrive long before young people have the tools to navigate them. The new campaign aims to build young people’s emotional literacy and ability to navigate the intense feelings that come with relationships, before harmful attitudes take hold.
The insight is simple: when you’re 15, these feelings can genuinely feel catastrophic. Rather than telling young people they’re overreacting or simply to calm down, the campaign meets them where they are, acknowledging the intensity of what they’re feeling in all its graphic, chaotic glory.
Everyday relationship niggles become swarms of cabbage moths, lightning storms and endlessly spinning rides, because that’s what they can feel like when you’re in the middle of them.
The visual language was deliberately heightened. Working with Finch, and director Andy Baker, the team chose a style that’s dramatic and stylised rather than literal, because these emotions aren’t real threats, but they feel visceral and consuming when you’re living with them. The brief was to make the internal world as big and grotesque as it feels, not as it looks from the outside.
That’s also why the work moves between both a grounded, real-world, and a heightened illustrated world, where the emotions spiral uncontrollably. The shift between the two is the device that dramatises the gap between what’s actually happening and what it feels like from inside a 15-year-old’s head.
At the heart of the campaign is an interactive experience that helps young people work through their own “end of the world” feelings, with practical, expert-led guidance to help them pause, regulate and communicate what they’re experiencing.
The stories and visual worlds were shaped alongside teenagers, whose own experiences and imaginations helped bring the work to life.
“Most young people recognise the importance of communicating respectfully. We need to help them feel confident doing that when a situation is difficult and emotions are running high. This campaign does that in an engaging and creative way,” said Patty Kinnersly, CEO at Our Watch.
“When you’re 15, being left on seen can genuinely feel like the end of the world. I should know. So rather than tell young people to calm down, we wanted to make those feelings as ridiculously big as they actually feel,” added Tiger Hongmung, art director at Clemenger BBDO.
“Working with teens to create these apocalyptic emotional worlds was as inspiring as it was humbling. Sure, they called us unc, but it was well worth it,” concluded Georgia Payne, copywriter at Clemenger BBDO.
Credits:
Client: Our Watch
Creative Agency: Clemenger BBDO
Media Agency: Atomic 212
Website Production: Today
Casting: Northside Casting
Live Action: Omnicom Content Experiences (OCX)
Live Action Director: Thomas Pollard (OCX)
Live Action DOP: Matteo Resta (OCX)
Offline & Online Editor: Felix Ferguson
Colourist: Martin Greer
Illustration/Animation: Andy Baker Studios / Finch Company
Sound & Music: Matt Thompson (OCX)
