Audiovisual, Communication Skills, Excellence Winner
Jonzed: One Night. So Many Mistakes.
Nova Scotia Liquor Corp. (NSLC)
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Contents:
Need/Opportunity
The Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation (NSLC), the fourth largest business and largest single banner retailer in Nova Scotia, manages the sale of beverage alcohol in the province of Nova Scotia, generating almost CDN$200 million profit annually. NSLC employs more than 1,500 Nova Scotians, offering 5,900 products from around the globe through 161 retail locations and 2,100 licensed establishments. The organization’s mandate to promote responsible consumption of beverage alcohol is both legislated provincially and embraced year-round by employees. The 2008 Jonzed campaign, developed by Revolve, delivered, in an unexpected and humorous way, the message that binge drinking is not an acceptable behaviour. University students (19–26 years old) are most likely to participate in binge drinking; therefore timing this campaign to the academic calendar at the eight universities and colleges in Nova Scotia was crucial to its success. This demographic assumes their beverage alcohol consumption is controllable, and they do not make the connection that their drinking patterns have serious health and social consequences.
The approach to the delivery of the message was unique, irreverent and unexpected. It had to be; in order to inform you must first engage, and to engage you must be interesting. To engage this young and nontraditional audience, the Jonzed campaign was presented in an online forum, one of the target audience’s main sources of information and entertainment. The NSLC created an opportunity for personal reflection on past behaviour by relating a story the audience members may have experienced either personally or with friends. The communication team chose to showcase this story through a “night of many mistakes” as experienced by the animated main character, Eugene Jonze.
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Intended Audience
The primary audience consisted of university students and recent graduates. This audience is made up of both males and females, ages 19–26. There are 35,702 undergraduate students attending eight universities and colleges in Nova Scotia.
Research shows the greatest incidence of binge drinking occurs within this age group. Past experience and research show that those in this demographic are not heavy consumers of traditional media, but they do spend a considerable amount of time online, engaged in peer networks and social media channels like YouTube. Successful marketing efforts in the past have also revealed that this group doesn’t respond well to being “preached to” with consequential approaches, but prefer to be entertained, which creates an opportunity to be informed. These insights factored heavily in the communication and creative strategy development.
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Goals and Objectives
The NSLC wants all customers to enjoy its products in a responsible manner, and is passionate about de-normalizing the behaviours that lead to the abuse of its products. It had become evident that the issue of binge drinking, especially among persons aged 19–26, had not been addressed with an effective communication strategy. The blurred line of where drinking as part of a social occasion becomes a binge episode resulting in severe intoxication needed to be addressed and communicated due to the possible dangerous health and social consequences. The primary assignment for Jonzed was to build awareness with the target audience that binge drinking is never an acceptable behaviour.
The specific communication objectives for the Jonzed short film were to:
- Discourage binge drinking among university students in Nova Scotia.
- Encourage conversation and “viral pass-around.”
- Enable university students to recognize the social stigmas and serious consequences associated with consuming excessive amounts of alcohol.
The following core objective was also established to measure the effectiveness of the reach of the campaign: Engage 25 percent of the university students in Nova Scotia.
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Solution Overview
Understanding the techno-savvy 19–26-year-old audience, who do not regularly consume mass media and are quick to tune out when being lectured to, the team’s approach integrated engaging and interactive sources of online entertainment to drive visitors to the Jonzed web site and viral videos. The heart of the 2008 Jonzed campaign is a short film and a main character who carries the story. Shot in live action but starring an animated character, the short film Jonzed was created to deliver a clear social responsibility message in an engaging and unconventional manner.
The live action portion of the film was shot over three days in many locations including a popular nightclub, a student’s apartment and an actual jail. All actors were challenged by interacting with a main character who was either not present or simply there in the form of a cardboard cutout.
With the live action sequence wrapped up and edited, the footage was turned over to a large team of animators who were tasked with inserting and animating the main character in his scenes. The animation team brought the character to life with personality, expressions, and actions that exaggerated his binge drinking behaviours and reinforced the social responsibility message.
To properly promote the video, the team created a series of three animated teasers that each hinted towards the behaviours of the main character. They also created two movie-style trailers with edited pieces of the short film. Using tricks from popular movie trailers, a big movie trailer voiceover and a strong call to action, the audience was lured to the short film without any notion of advertising, corporate sponsorship or socially responsible subject matter. NSLC believes these tactics minimized the amount of people within the target audience who would “tune out” before the key messages were revealed.
The completed video was posted to the site, and continues to live as the centerpiece of the Jonzed.com web site. It will live perpetually on the site, on YouTube and on Facebook. It was also loaded onto 1,000 USB silicone bracelets and handed out to university students across the province.
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Implementation and Challenges
The total budget was CDN$150,000, including:
- Development of the Jonzed short film, two cinema trailers and three 15-second teasers.
- All production costs (animation, filming, editing, casting, talent, post-production, sound design).
- Agency fees.
Time Line:
June and July 2008
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- Concept development
- Short film planning, casting and scouting
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August 2008
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- Short film live action shooting and editing
- Web site development
- Animation
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September 2008
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- Animation mixed with live action
- Web site launch
- Creation of Facebook group with contests
- Launch of online teasers, trailers and in-store materials
- Completion of short film
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October 2008
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- Launch of short film
- Trailer run in movie theatres
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This project presented many challenges. Connecting to a small and quickly evolving group of consumers, who traditionally do not connect to mass marketing efforts or consequence based messaging, was a priority. Content needed to thrive in the interactive channels that are consumed by the target group, and it had to be edgy and entertaining enough so that people not only watched the film, but also recommended and forwarded it to friends.
Incorporating a social responsibility message into that mix presented a complex and multilayered communication need, while offering an attractive and challenging opportunity for creativity. The team chose to go the route of a short film, mixing animation with live action, because it is unique in the market and allowed them to make a more entertaining film. Animated characters allow flexibility, exaggeration and a license to push boundaries that would not be possible using real people. By using an animated character, the team enabled all viewers to relate to particular traits or behaviours that they may have in common once in a while with Jonze; however, Jonze could suffer more severe (exaggerated) effects of binge drinking without evoking sympathy from the audience.
To create a film with this blended style required planning the shoot live with excruciating attention to detail. The list was very precise, and cardboard cutouts were used to aid the actors with their deliveries. The full short film needed to be edited and approved by the NSLC before the animated character could be added. This required a large leap of faith by the NSLC, who at times was asked to approve the story without being able to see the star of the show.
It was critical to the NSLC that the final work communicated the campaign message while not discouraging responsible consumption of their products. The Jonzed campaign was designed to shed light on binge drinking behaviour rather than the consequences of drinking overall. The team believes that was achieved by showing other characters throughout the film enjoying alcohol sensibly, thus rendering the main character an outcast for his pattern of alcohol abuse.
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Measurement/Evaluation
The goal of the campaign was to engage as many of Nova Scotia’s undergraduate university students as possible. The objective was to reach 25 percent of this student population.
The following statistics were accumulated during the two months following the launch of the web site.
- Total unique visitors to the site: 16,262
- Total video views (including views on Jonzed.com and YouTube): 16,282
- Percentage of total visitors who viewed a video on the site: 63 percent
Additional considerations:
- One thousand Jonzed USB bracelets were placed directly into the hands of the target audience. This cannot be measured in terms of clicks to the web site.
- On-campus activity resulting from the distribution of the 80 toolkits sent to Cape Breton University, Dalhousie, Saint Mary’s, Acadia and Saint Francis Xavier cannot be measured in terms of clicks to the web site.
The team is confident based on the communication channels chosen to promote the campaign that the majority of the 16,262 visitors were within the target group. Therefore, they are comfortable in concluding that they exceeded the objective of reaching 25 percent of the target group, especially when considering the additional impressions earned through on-campus activity (which unfortunately cannot be quantified).
The team conducted an online survey during the campaign from 20 November–9 December, asking Nova Scotia residents, ages 19–26 for their assessment of the video. Of those who responded:
- Fifty-nine percent had seen the Jonzed film.
- Eighty-six percent acknowledged that the film did at minimum a good job conveying the idea that it’s OK to drink, but you have to know your limits.
- Eighty-six percent agreed that “The film made me think about the possible consequences of my friends drinking.”
- Seventy-five percent agreed that “The film made me consider drinking more responsibly in the future.”
- Thirty percent of respondents watched the film more than once, and 37 percent forwarded it to their friends.
A recognized leader in the social responsibility arena, the NSLC continues to evolve and embrace nontraditional campaigns. The additional benefits derived from this campaign include the engagement and support of employees who continue to champion NSLC campaigns at the store level by wearing campaign T-shirts, positioning posters at cash registers, and discussing the campaigns with customers on an ongoing basis. This campaign represents a tremendous leap of faith for a monopoly retailer of beverage alcohol willing to make a significant investment in innovative communication strategies.
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