The Brief

The Swedish organization IQ challenged us to address the risks of alcohol consumption in combination with smartphone usage. The target group was young adults.

Insight

In the mobile age, a headache is the least of your worries after a late night out.

Strategy

To educate Swedes on smartphone-related hazards of drinking a lot - while keeping a smile on their faces.

Launch and implementation

We made a survey, showing that a lot of people use their smartphone under the influence of alcohol. To underline the problem we made an app; a hilarious booze filter for iPhones.

We communicated the survey and the test at the same time.

People read about the app, or watched it on the news, and downloaded it.

Since the app is about communicating in a sober manner, there was a built-in spread effect from user to user.

Technical solution

We created a handful of game-like tests, using the iPhone's built-in sensors to balance falling blocks, rolling a ball on the edge of a hole - and more. All in order to determine whether the user might be too intoxicated to safely tweet, post or text. If the user chose to disregard this advice, the outgoing message would have "this message is NOT booze filtered!" attached to it. Another feature was a quarantine for those text messages that seemed to be a good idea to send from the bar - but could render catastrophic consequences the day after. All this is built natively in Objective C with a home made plug-in framework which allows for easy implementation of new tests. 

Result

Thanks to the survey and the app, we got huge media coverage on the topic of alcohol and smartphone usage. One of Sweden’s most famous journalists tried the test in four minutes, on national TV, while the head of IQ was interviewed. He didn’t pass. He was probably nervous.

After the campaign, one out of four young adults in Sweden had heard about our app. One out of five claimed that the app had got them to reflect upon using their smartphones under the influence of alcohol.

Media highlighted the subjects our client wanted to address. We got more than 400,000 young adults not only to notice - but to reflect. And last, but not least, we made the iPhone your friend – even after midnight.