Embarrassing Stories

MAKING A MEDICINE BRAND AN ENTERTAINER WHILE BREAKING TABOOS

The brand and the product:

Furazolidon, which is a local anti-diarrheal pill

Market background:

Efficient product in the past for the elders

Furazolidon used to be the most bought product by people of old age (due to the fact it was a well-known product in the communist era). But Saprosan and Smecta, more actual and modern products, also started communicating to the masses and had success to the youth target (20-40 y.o.). And from the data it was clear Smecta is the new comer and a possible threat.

New approach:

A new audience

Furazolidon must react to all the above by being relevant for the young people in its next campaign and not let Smecta create a niche market.

Consumer insights:

*** insight one***

There are a lot of ridiculous situations happening due to the unexpected coming of this "illness": diarrhea. Talking to people we found out there was no person that did not have or know a memorable experience or story (running for a toilet, finding a bush, "escaping" it in their pants like a helpless baby, etc).

And we have realised they are all amused with these happenings; and they involve emotionally when they are talking about them even the subject is such a "delicate one".

*** insight two***

Young people like to connect, interact with a product and they also prefer having a brand experience instead of only being communicated something.

Message:

The brand message of Furazolidon is its efficiency.

As long as we reinterpret this attribute into any emotional benefit we can have the generic message desired by all people from this medicine category but create a specific campaign.

Therefore the fact no stories, no moments like these appear anymore because of the efficiency of Furazolidon became the campaign’s specific message.

Creatives:

The message interpretation got to be:

"Now you can laugh reading or seeing stories like these instead of going through them!"

And the solution for making them interact was: let young people share their stories!

And become an ad.

A fresh, interactive, culture brand campaign on a pharmaceutical product started (nothing like this was ever made in Romania on this category: medicines).

People could tell their stories on the Internet and the best voted ones could reach on TV as the campaign’s spots or just printed on wood posters (for them to receive them and put them in their homes).

Step 1: Announcing embarassingstories.ro

A. We created a website: the name was in Romanian but meant embarassingstories.ro

Only when you’ve entered the site you found out finally who’s behind.

We’ve started everything by promoting the site and not the product because we knew some young people would rather go on a site than watch an advertising campaign and the surprise of the campaign will create word-of-mouth because of this;

The design was inspired by the crosses from Săpânța Merry Cemetery, a unique place in Romania where death stories are presented in funny ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_Cemetery.

B. We created teasing with different raw video pieces to attract you to the site:

We shot three stories of our own with an amateur camera and sent them out as viral spots;

they were inviting people to see more on the site, where they could find they can share a similar story.

C. We presented stories in posters (with images emphasising some memorable examples) and we did the same on the radio and within pharmacies.

Step 2: Presenting the real winning stories on TV

We've produced TV spots with the winning stories (voted by people) & put them on-air as our campaign.

This campaign was awarded with a Gold Effie and it was nominated at the Grand Effie in 2008.

And the prints received the award in 2011 as "Best Prints of the Decade in Romania" (2000-2010).

#VIRAL

The following are the three viral teasing Internet video ads: