Episode 67 - Durex Ad Reviewed by Billion Dollar Boy, Strat House and GSK
This week’s Durex ad from Australia is a bit of a fun PR stunt, aiming to get everyone excited about coming out of COVID lockdown.
Chosen by our partners Contagious, it's cheeky and trying to pull people in, but did anyone even get to see it and what impact does it make? Does it fall flat when you scratch the surface?
We are joined by Thomas Walters (Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer UK at Billion Dollar Boy), Melanie Welsh (Founding Partner at Strat House) and Jerry Daykin (EMEA Senior Media Director at GSK). See what they thought about the ad and how they felt it compared to the NHS #getyourshot campaign.
Transcription
The following is an automated transcript of the file, which is not 100% accurate but will give you a good idea of what was discussed.
Tom Ollerton 0:06
Hello and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads.
My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, and this is a weekly show where brands watch other brands' ads and discuss what's good and bad about them.
We are brought to you by Contagious, who've helped choose the ad today.
So, thanks, guys, for sending us an unending stream of weird and wonderful ads from around the world.
So, please go and check those guys out after the show.
But before we get to this week's ad, let's meet this week's guests.
Thomas Walters 0:35
Hi, everyone. I'm Tom. I'm one of the co-founders and CEO of BDB UK.
So, it's Billion Dollar Boy UK.
Melanie Walsh 0:43
Hi, I'm Mel. I'm a co-founder of Strat House.
Jerry Daykin 0:45
And I'm Jerry. I lead media across Europe, Middle East, and Africa for GSK Consumer Healthcare.
Tom Ollerton 0:51
Fantastic. Right? Let's see this week's ad.
Right, Jerry... What did you first think when you saw that campaign?
Jerry Daykin 1:58
It's sort of a nice idea.
It feels...
A made for advertising idea, like it's...
All the coverage I could find of it was kind of in advertising press.
It didn't seem to spark a lot of kind of actual local consumer interest.
But it's quite, it's quite a fine idea.
I guess if you work in a sort of a health care category in one way,
your topic's a little bit risque and it's kind of hard to have...
You know, perhaps the wrong choice of words there.
But it's tricky to have a public conversation about it.
It's obviously trying to make your brand relevant to a moment.
Getting behind the vaccine cause.
It's definitely sort of a true insight, I guess.
You know, people have been stuck at homes,
hopefully seeing fewer people having less sex.
So, there is some relevance for the brand.
But it felt a bit sort of small and gimmicky and like not many people probably actually
saw it or even perhaps understood it if they saw it driving past.
But a bit of fun, I guess.
Melanie Walsh 2:49
Yeah, I agree with Jerry, though.
I think it was fine. And you could see precisely where it come from,
you know, so you can see the sort of the interesting bits are,
the global to local activation.
You know, so, start trying in the UK
and then doing it in Australia as well.
You know, there are some there are bits of goodness throughout it, aren't they? You know...
Sort of the data capture, albeit that it's not the most
user friendly data capture form anyone's ever seen.
But, you know, they're trying to integrate that.
Thomas Walters 3:19
I thought it was quite nice fun, like I get why they did it.
And condom sales, specifically Durex sales, I saw
kind of skyrocketed in China and the UK in particular after lockdowns were lifted in those regions.
You know, Sydney in particular has been in some quite intense lockdown for a long period of time.
And bringing a bit of humor, I thought was nice.
But I think as soon as you kind of scratch the surface with it,
it falls, falls flat, unfortunately.
And one thing that I thought was interesting is they have all been in lockdown.
So, who would have actually seen this advert?
No one's, no one's going out and about.
So, it was purely a PR stunt.
Tom Ollerton 4:03
So, Jerry would have made this better for you?
Jerry Daykin 4:06
When you flick through like the Instagram,
I think they created a new Instagram account for this,
which has about 3000 followers or something.
So, I mean, they probably put a little bit of media behind it to get to that.
But most of the videos they've created where you can see the public view count
and it's kind of like a couple of hundred views or, you know,
a couple of, a couple of likes or comments or something.
It's a fun cheeky advert.
It doesn't, there's not much visible sign that they put a huge sort of lock it behind it
to make more people see it.
And by the time they've gone to some of the effort they did,
it would have been pretty easy icing on the cake,
I think, just to boost it a bit wider.
But yeah. Make it bigger.
Tom Ollerton 4:42
How about you, Mel?
If someone had put this idea in front of you and said,
"Right, we're going to send this van around funnily named places in Sydney."
What would you pushed back and said, "No, I think this could be better."
What would've, what would you've added to it?
Melanie Walsh 4:54
Yeah, I mean, it depends what they, what they were trying to do.
We're assuming it was awareness.
And so then, you know, everything that Jerry just said about it,
if you haven't got something that's getting traction on its own
and put money behind it to make it bigger.
If they were aiming for engagement, then in a sort of more attention to the the user experience,
is that data capturing and also, it's just practical things like
we know, we all know that, you know,
money back redemption is less likely to succeed than something of some kind.
Just...
All the way through the journey to the little details at the end would have been good.
You know, and if you can establish an emotional connection
and you can link this to purpose,
and Durex, you know, is sort of making some really lovely steps
into purpose with things like let's go back to normal and sort of breaking sex taboos.
How are you going to get the traction that Jerry was talking about?
If you, if you haven't got that hook in the first place?
Jerry Daykin 5:45
They were, they were dabbling with an interesting idea, an interesting purpose.
They just didn't quite push it far enough.
Melanie Walsh 5:50
Yeah, I agree.
Thomas Walters 5:51
Pushing vaccination on people.
You look at how activations from like Valentino, for example,
have landed trying to push vaccination as an agenda, as a brand.
It's not gone down well.
And you just, you'd expect it and not particularly go down while in a place like Australia
to where vaccine hesitancy is being a lot higher than a lot of other countries.
It wasn't a seamless execution, but I think,
I also think that it would have been a lot more effective
if people are locked down, they're in their homes...
That social media usage at its highest than it's ever been,
in pretty much every country where lockdown has been present.
Why not run it as a social campaign?
I really think it would have been a lot more effective and had a lot more talkability if it was.
Melanie Walsh 6:33
Yeah, totally.
And they didn't need to try and, you know,
I mean, they're doing...
You're right.
They don't have much permission to get into talking
about whether people should or shouldn't take vaccines,
whether they had loads of other things that they could have
talked about and unlogged
that would have been far more relevant.
Jerry Daykin 6:47
And even that the fact that it's a digital board,
it was a bit unnecessary.
Like the vaccine rate doesn't change that fast, you know.
It's not going to change like 60 to 80 percent
and during the course of one run around Sydney.
So, yeah, it feels that way.
Yeah.
Again, they just could have gone, could have gone bigger and harder.
Thomas Walters 7:03
If you look at the end, the NHS and NHS, that that was running not too long ago,
encouraging young people to get vaccinated,
which was basically playing on people's desire to go out clubbing again.
Unknown Speaker 7:17
2 shots, Yes, please. Now chase the key. Got your books. got it done. Now I'm out on the run. Here goes, let's go go away from the home. And I get closer to those the love and know he will miss having kissed haven't hugged, which at this daytime Let's meet or late night rave scene.
Unknown Speaker 7:47
Let's dance. Let's be let's see, dance floors, new scenes, get yours done be on the scene with your squad, the team? Those that did a lot. Let me see. Let me know, when you're free, then let's go to the streets.
Thomas Walters 8:16
It went down extremely well.
Hugely high rates of engagement.
And it was because it was actually going,
"Oh, this the experience that you're missing.
This is what you want to get to.
Why not?
Why not get vaccinated?"
Because then you're going to be able to do that.
Maybe it was a small budget and actually
it did what it needed to.
I think bringing in a bit more of that,
a bit more of that, bit more storytelling,
a bit more emotion would have really, really taken a bit further.
Melanie Walsh 8:40
Yeah, totally.
Because, you know, and even budget wise, you know,
when you look at some of the sort of joyous content that's on Tik Tok,
you know, you think about the opportunities to
create stuff that was around emotional connection
rather than something that was a little bit functional.
And in the ad, just sort of went
direct.
Oh, great. You know, we can all have sex again.
But sex is actually, you know, so like...
Human beings' ways,
human beings' way of, you know,
expressing deep emotional connection.
And then it seems a shame to have lost that.
Tom Ollerton 9:09
So, unfortunately, we're at the end of the recording now.
So, what I'm going to get you guys to do is to vote
for how good do you think this campaign was
from a scale of one to five,
one being rubbish, five being great,
but using your fingers as an indication.
So, one, two, three...
One, two and a two.
Right, guys, that is...
Thanks for sharing your views.
That was a...
I was surprised by how low that was.
I thought was a lot better than that.
Anyway, but it's about you, not me.
And thank you so much, Mel, Jerry, Tom.
We'll see you all next week.
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