Client:  Hume City Council and Vic Health

The Hume City Council approached me to create a couple of concepts for their new public health campaign targeting males aged 18-34 years.

The primary campaign message was to encourage the target audience to make the switch from sugary drinks to water. Sugary drinks may include: soft drinks such as Coca Cola, lemonade etc.), energy drinks such as Mother, V, Red Bull and / or sports drinks like Gatorade.

Council wanted to highlight the benefits of drinking water such as: improved health and well being.

So I asked myself how should we communicate this to the target audience?

Hume have done a little bit of market research with this audience and found they are often not too concerned about the future health impacts or the financial costs associated with sugary drink consumption. Therefore, promotional efforts that focus on things like long-term obesity risks/caloric intake/cost of purchasing drinks are unlikely to be effective. The audience however, are motivated to have a healthy/fit/muscular body because it gives them ‘cred’ amongst their mates and boosts their dating potential.
In summary, Hume Council are wanting to run with a campaign message that conveys:

Water = improved body which helps with relationships plus ‘cred’ with
mates plus the energy to have fun.

The winning concept was a parody of a typical sports drink advert.

I dressed up the advert like an energy drink ad to attract the males’ attention utilising dynamic, strong, masculine graphics that yell. The ad looks like the message is promoting a new drink but in fact we are just advertising plain old water which is better for you. Its a creative way to convey a public health message in the hope that the audience finds it humorous and clever.