Viacom: Listen
A Campaign Against Addiction

Challenge

Viacom was seeking a partner to develop Listen, a pro-social campaign to fight drug addiction that was to be launched in tandem with an upcoming Surgeon General’s report, Facing Addiction in America. Our task: build a campaign up to the task of addressing addiction that would meet the high bar of past Viacom public service campaigns – complete with messaging, content and campaign collateral.

Insight

Working in collaboration with the team from Viacom’s creative agency, Velocity, we would need to establish a disciplined workflow that allowed for collaborative concepting and design review that could then be executed, reviewed, and approved for a cross-channel Viacom and Ad Council supported campaign.

The campaign would need to both live up to the creative standards set by Viacom on its channels ranging from MTV and Nickelodeon to Spike, and campaigns from Choose or Lose to Get Schooled, while carrying meaningful and engaging pro-social messaging focused on fighting addiction. Based on Viacom audience research and outreach to campaign partners, we would need to synthesize multiple stakeholder POVs into the campaign, with a unifying Listen message that could work for all.

Content Strategy

With Velocity, we set a content strategy that mixed documentary and scripted approaches, then divvied up responsibilities for content creation. It was decided that Found Object would assume responsibility for the documentary narratives and the Listen microsite, while we would  collaborate with Velocity on messaging and overall design.

Throughout, we liaised with the Viacom CSR client directly, to ensure that Listen campaign elements – microsite, messaging and content – fit the need to be both creative and substantive.

Research & Development

Initial Viacom research indicated that listening is the first step to addiction recovery. Thus, the concept for Listen: Facing Addiction in America. Beyond listening, we needed to discover the ideal audience: addicts or their supporters.

To hone in on campaign goals, we participated in Viacom focus groups that allowed us to focus the approach to speaking directly to the supporters of addicts with tools for listening and resources for recovery. Building on the concept “it starts with listening,” we researched comparable addiction resources across the globe and spoke with experts at addiction organizations.

Content Creation: No Shame PSA

During research, we discovered the viral phenomenon of overdose videos, posted to social media to shock audiences and shame the user. On the comment thread for a particular overdose video, we noticed the young woman in the video, Robin, commenting to say she had gotten clean and was ready to help anyone who needed it. We knew we had our No Shame story. With two weeks to launch, we filmed with Robin, capturing a story of resilience and redemption that would represent the message of Listen.