TV Licencing - It's not funny
Problem
Research showed that students didn't take the need for a TV Licence seriously - but didfear the consequences of breaking the law. The creative opportunity was to make them understand that if they have a TV, it's the law to have a TV Licence, and breaking that law will result in a series of sobering consequences. We wanted to turn word-of-mouth among students on campus from joking that 'you can get away with not buying a licence' to worrying about the inevitability of getting caught and the severity of the penalty.
Solution
Knowing students find word-of-mouth more credible than the authoritative voices, we based our campaign on 'anti-humour'. Online research showed anti-humour to be a popular student underground genre that's 'funny because it isn't'. We simply played the gags that are so familiar to students, back to them - but just when they expected a punchline, we delivered hard-hitting facts that left them in no doubt that evading TV Licensing was a serious offence. While turning humour on its head created unexpected impact, it had all the advantages of the humour: it's engaging, contagious and you can't turn away before the end of the message, in any media.
Results
Over 350,000 votes were cast on the site, and to date the site has 82,000 unique users and 1,761 active registered uploaders. Users viewed up to 48 pages per visit and generated over 94,419 viral clips.
The multi-media campaign, of which digital was an integral part, maintained the record 24% sales growth seen in 05/06, and increased sales a further 5% YOY. Online sales also exceeded target by 242%.
And most excitingly, as the inter-collegiate rivalry intensified, universities literally took the campaign over, producing their own promotional campaign flyers and emails, and set up dedicated Facebook pages to tap into the power of social networking.
