'Eat Them To Defeat Them' campaign drives £100m growth in veg consumption plus...4 more campaigns that brilliantly leverage antagonists.

Eat Them To Defeat Them | Veg Power & ITV | Adam&EveDDB | 2019

Veg Power's 'Eat Them To Defeat Them' campaign, conducted in partnership with ITV, has resulted in a sustained increase in vegetable consumption, according to the non-profit organization's five-year evaluation. The evaluation data revealed that 53% of parents participating in the schools' program reported long-term benefits in both the quantity and variety of vegetables consumed. This year's campaign, funded by major supermarket chains and supported by ITV, Channel 4, and Sky Media, ran during primetime TV slots. The campaign's effectiveness in increasing children's vegetable consumption was confirmed by 77% of parents reporting that their child ate more vegetables directly due to the campaign. The findings highlight the long-lasting impact of the campaign on behavior and emphasize the importance of exposing children to it.

Anti-Hero Antagonists.

While the above campaign brilliantly turned veg into a common enemy that united children all over the country, there are several other ways to position your creative idea using an anti-hero antagonist.  Here are four of the more familiar routes.

Use an anti-hero who [is familiar] to provoke action:

#itcanwait | W/Cape Govt Safety | Ogilvy

Problem: Drivers text and drive and don’t believe there is anything wrong with that. They don’t feel they’re distracted so are reluctant to change their behaviour.

Solution: Identify behaviour from people just like them that shocks drivers who text and provokes them into acting differently.

Behaviour: Pedestrians who bump into things when they text while walking.

Twist: A car crash finale and the crushing sign-off: You can’t even text and walk. So why do you text and drive?

Target Audience Reaction: The strapline says it all. The campaign frames the issue in a way that is hard for drivers who text to ignore. The trojan horse shift in tone from ‘slapstick funny’ to ‘deeply disturbing’ is also a fantastic way to entice engagement from the target audience before delivering the powerful closing message.

Use an anti-hero who [is not familiar] to provoke action:

World’s Biggest Asshole | Donate Life | Martin Agency

Problem: Young millennial males are vital to the organ donor registry program, but they don’t think about death much and they tune out easily to conventional campaigns featuring rosy images of organ donors saving lives.

Solution: Coleman F. Sweeney, The World’s Biggest Asshole – is an anti-hero that is both familiar and unfamiliar to his target audience.

Behaviour: He acts like a complete jerk to everyone throughout his entire life.

Twist: He's a hero in death because he donates all his organs to the organ donor registry.

Target Audience Reaction: A double whammy! Many young millennial men saw themselves as ‘assholes’ too and so were provoked into action. Others saw the campaign and realised this dirtbag did something decent that they haven’t, so this triggered a reaction.

Impact: The campaign generated 50 million views in its first week and more than 100 million to date. More importantly, online donor registrations rose dramatically. Before the campaign, they averaged 149 people a day, in the first week that spiked up to an average of 1,080 a day.

Use an anti-hero who we dislike to unify and provoke us:

Renewable Is Unstoppable | OVO Energy | Uncommon

Problem: To get people in the UK to start powering their lives without ruining the planet, by switching to OVO’s 100% renewable tariff.

Solution: Identify behaviour from people your target audience doesn’t like to reassure them about the choice OVO gives them.

Behaviour: Donald Trump is a symbol for everything renewable energy is not. Trump absolutely hates solar energy. And a lot of people dislike Donald Trump.

Twist: Show Donald Trump (lookalike) trying to destroy solar panels with his golf club. This is not so much a twist rather than a hilarious spoof and very clever positioning.

Target Audience Reaction: If you don’t like Donald Trump and you believe in climate change, then this advert is engagement dynamite. OVO make it easy for you to become part of ‘the movement’. You can like, share, and comment on this ad and play your small part in the rally cry that renewable energy is indeed unstoppable. Campaigns don’t go viral. They go tribal. And this campaign has a big tribe of people to fire up!

Use an anti-hero who doesn't deserve to be benefiting:

The Most Important Smartphone Ad  | Refuge | BBH

Problem: While smarter tech provides many benefits, it can also (undeservingly) aid perpetrators of abuse to keep control of their partners.

Solution: Identify how smartphone tech appeals to perpetrators of abuse (the antagonists) and provide a campaign that promotes the product to them.

Behaviour: Start by showing the campaign from a traditional perspective, revealing how useful smartphone features are.

Twist: Switch tack and show the benefits of these features to perpetrators. Such as how maps can be used to track people’s movements to heat and lighting automation apps that let abusers control their partners when they’re not at home.