Dramamine, the #1 anti-nausea brand in the US, is so effective at preventing nausea that it ended the need for barf bags. Because of this, Dramamine set out to pay tribute to the very thing it killed. “The Last Barf Bag: A Tribute to a Cultural Icon” is an award-winning documentary feature short that explores every corner of the barf bag universe. From quirky collectors, to flight attendants, to real barf stories, “The Last Barf Bag” entertains and engages people with our brand in a new way.

The barf bag, a plastic-lined air sickness bag, was invented in 1949 and since has been available on planes, trains, boats, busses, and cars to address the issue of motion sickness. But with the growth of Dramamine—the #1 anti-nausea brand in the US—barf bags have become far less necessary. However, they remain an important collectible and conversation starter to a subculture of collectors across the globe who celebrate their novelty, absurdity, and clever design.

In 1949, Gilmore Schjeldahl invented barf bags for Northwest Orient Airlines. Oddly enough, in the exact same year, a genuine scientific and medicinal innovation emerged: Dramamine, an over-the-counter medication for nausea. As 2024 marked the joint 75th anniversary for both the brand and the barf bag, we couldn’t help but notice that Dramamine was thriving while barf bags were dying. Underused and underappreciated, barf bags—along with their admiring collectors, community, and industry—fell victim to the success of the brand. That made us think: What if we reminded the world how effective Dramamine is by saying goodbye to the industry we are accidentally killing?

Dramamine, the #1 anti-nausea brand in the US, is so effective at preventing nausea that it ended the need for barf bags. That made us think: What if we reminded the world how effective Dramamine is by saying goodbye to the industry we are accidentally killing? So, we set out to pay tribute to a fellow icon of nausea with The Last Barf Bag, an entire campaign built around giving the barf bag a grand farewell since Dramamine has barfing covered. We launched with a documentary that explores a every corner of the barf bag universe and premiered the film at a museum exhibit that literally put barf bags on a pedestal. We also designed an e-commerce platform that imagines a better future by selling repurposed bags for everything but barf—all to show people the impact and efficacy of Dramamine in an unsuspecting way.

The people most important to Dramamine are those who suffer nausea while traveling. But generic versions of Dramamine were threatening our #1 status. The brand needed to create something that would re-establish Dramamine as the leader in nausea control and invite our audience to engage with the brand in a memorable, culturally relevant way. To do so, we used the ultimate expression of nausea: the barf bag.

Dramamine paid tribute to barf bags everywhere through immersive and entertaining activations. In a journey across America, we created a documentary that explores every corner of the barf bag universe, including the charming personalities of real barf bag collectors. The film premiered at the first ever barf bag museum, where we literally put barf bags on a pedestal. Niche enthusiasts and media were invited to the exhibit in New York City to admire showpieces like a space barf bag from NASA that defied gravity on a levitating display. But it didn’t stop there—to ensure the bags had a place in a barfless future, an e-commerce platform sold bags repurposed as more useful items. These aren’t barf bags anymore—they’re coloring pages, notebooks, flower vases. With every execution, an icon was celebrated, and we reinforced the idea that when nausea pops up, you turn to Dramamine.

The Last Barf Bag earned over 660 million impressions in just three weeks, with paid media earning 3 million more impressions. Sales on Amazon are up 26% post-launch versus a year ago. The museum exhibit had over 200 attendees, ranging from media personalities to influencers capturing novel content to share with their following, and the documentary has been warmly received by audiences from news media and travel journalists to the collectors themselves. The ads promoting the campaign beat Meta benchmarks by 10,000%, and brand engagement increased by 23% vs pre-campaign. The documentary is now competing in the film festival circuit and has already been named a 2024 Official Selection at the prestigious Tribeca Festival. We are also receiving interest from airlines about including the documentary in their in-flight entertainment offering.