Case Study: The Lost Night
New Zealand’s Health Promotion Agency, an existing client of FCB, campaigns on topics such as mental health, depression and alcohol abuse. In 2016, research showed that a large proportion of those drinking in a harmful way were aged 18-24 years. It was this statistic that they approached FCB to tackle.
The problem
Alcohol-related harm costs New Zealand taxpayers $4.9 billion each year. Meanwhile, 18-24-year-olds by far make up the highest proportion of those who drink alcohol excessively, even though they make up just 10% of the total population, The challenge for FCB was to reduce binge-drinking by raising awareness and provide them with an incentive to moderate their alcohol consumption.
For Senior Creative David Shirley, it was a brief that played to the agencies strengths, “we’re an agency that prides itself on producing behaviour-changing work, which improves New Zealanders lives. So, this brief was right up our alley. And secondly, we were excited by the challenge of trying to influence this hard to reach and quite often cynical audience.”
The insight
Shirley worked with his partner Melina Fiolitakis, alongside ECD Tony Clewitt and strategist Carl Sarney to uncover an insight that would prove the catalyst. Shirley explains the logic, “18-24-year-olds in New Zealand see getting drunk as the gateway to an epic night out. So, knowing that health wasn’t something that spoke to this group, we focused on something that did matter to them – missing out.”
So the team decided to illustrate the ‘tipping point’: when “fun night out” becomes “one too many”. This would portray moderation as the way to enjoy your night.
The execution
The idea was originally to make a poster campaign, where a sticker obscured a party scene, showing your memories of this scene had been ‘repossessed from your memory’. Eventually, the poster idea grew into a larger world, which demanded to be a film.
But before filming could begin, there was a requirement that three scripts be tested for resonance with the target market. The team were concerned that The Lost Night was too odd to be understood in script-form. The research showed quite the opposite – it was almost unanimously the favourite.
Production partner Scoundrel were supporting the project, and Director Daniel Warwick made a special effort to fly to New Zealand, based on the quality of the script. Shirley explains the benefit of such good partners, “We love working in a collaborative environment and that’s exactly what we got from Daniel and Scoundrel – a group of beautifully talented people without ego, who just wanted to make great work.”
The production team was enhanced by Ginny Loane (DOP), Neville Stevenson (Production Design), Bob Buck (Costume Design), Tim Mauger (Editor) and The Mill (Grading). The soundtrack was provided by cult underground musician DJ Koze.
The launch
“We treated The Lost Night more like a short film than an ad.” Says Shirley, describing how they advertised it with street posters and a movie trailer. The film itself ran on primetime TV in New Zealand. The digital element involved geo-targeting people who had been in bars the previous night.
The result
The result was that three-quarters of New Zealand’s 18-34yo population saw the film. Online viewing statistics show that they were engaged too, with a completion rate of 79%.
ECD Tony Clewett explains why he thinks the project was a success, “Our audience is a smart and savvy bunch. They see through marketing in a flash, so you can’t be dull or, even worse, finger-waggy. The upside of that challenge is that creativity really comes to the fore. Hence the birth of this twisted, surreal, crazy, WTF world, that is the Department of Lost Nights.”