Title	PLAY IN THE SHADE
Brand	THE SWEDISH CANCER SOCIETY
Product/Service	CANCER PREVENTION
Category	A05. LIVE EXPERIENCE
Entrant Company	VOLONTAIRE Stockholm, SWEDEN
Contributing Company	VOLONTAIRE Stockholm, SWEDEN

The Campaign

The market for branded content in Sweden is by international comparison very mature. We have a solid tradition of a very active public service, not only aiming to inform, but also to entertain. This means entertainment-oriented tv productions, governmentally subsidized newspapers and four radio stations. All public service media are legally prohibited from mentioning the name of any privately held company or organization, which applies to our client, the Swedish Cancer Society. Given the small budget (€50,000), this creates a set of vast limitations for how far such a message (staying out of the sun) can reach, in terms of earned media.

Results

In Sweden, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, Melanoma, has doubled over the last ten years, in spite of ambitious governmental information campaigns. In Sweden, for months at a time, less than 4 hours of sunshine a day is normal, it can be hard to keep people out of the sun. This makes people crave being in the sun, thus making a prevention message hard to convey. This led us to the second insight that our messaging had to be associated with summer, joy and be positive in order to get people to listen. People are not only tired of shock messaging. A message telling sun-craving Swedes to stay out of the long lost sun is so far foreign to the average Swede, causing their perception to miss it completely. We invested the entire media budget in research and development, construction and film, following a cost-efficent content-driven strategy. This meant hiring engineers to develop the world’s first Shadow Soccer Field, including construction design and modifications, safety and strength calculations as well as on-site testing. The experiment was then documented by a talented film production company who created a short but visually stunning video, scored by Swedish pop star Albin Gromer. The content proved to fit into the online news outlets ever growing need of visually compelling video content. It also proved well suited for the new genre of news sites that like Buzzfeed and Upworthy publish mainly good news. The film also served as a perfect social object, that immediately (or at least in circa 90 seconds) could convey this innovation in a coherent way across the world’s social media, independent of the user’s language, writing or pedagogical skills.

There were three ways people got drawn to the content. The first was through a major wild-postering campaign in Stockholm, bringing people to the live event. The second was through social media and the third was via the editorial coverage from the attending media. This was also documented in a video, that in itself got passed along the internet. The campaign reached more than 120 countries.

The live experiment was covered by Sweden’s largest commercial news outlet, TV4, resulting in a 2-minute segment broadcasted at Prime Time. This gave it the necessary credibility to spread across the world. So far, this small Swedish campaign with a total budget of €50,000 has achieved: 1. Own channels Facebook: 1966 likes (96% compared to our goal) and 548 shares (548% compared to our goal). Twitter: 63 interactions (263% compared to our goal). 2. Editorial 101 mentions (878% compared to our goal) with a noted exclusive feature in the 7 o’clock news on Swedens second largest news channel (700 000+ viewers). 3. PR-value The campaign reached 6 million people globally and attained an estimated PR-value of 1.3 million Euro (24 times better than our goal). But most important, decision makers from cancer prevention institutions from all over the world have contacted the Swedish Cancer Society, asking how Play in the Shade can be implemented in their country. Right now, plans for realizing these wishes are in the making.