With an aging population and young adults damaging their hearing through concerts, clubbing, excessive ear bud volumes, etc. 1 in 10 Canadian adults now have diagnosed hearing loss while millions more are undiagnosed. Duracell provides hearing aid batteries for which sales were historically stagnant. The objective was to resonate with adults (those with hearing aids as well as friends and family of individuals with hearing aids or hearing loss issues) and grow sales within the cacophony of the advertising marketplace.
Identifying various cultural catalysts we ultimately unpacked one: with the proliferation of screen content we live in a hyper visual-centric world. Digging deeper, we unveiled this powerful insight: within the overwhelming majority of content most passionately consumed, the contribution of audio -- and therefore the importance of hearing -- has been sidelined. Audio (i.e. hearing) has become the ‘forgotten sibling’ in content. Think about television content about which nobody asks, “Did you hear that tv show”? They ask if you saw it. But you in fact heard it as well as saw it. The insight inspired this strategy: highlight the importance of hearing by moving the audio of people’s beloved content from the sidelines to centre stage.
Hearing is a sensory experience. People learn and change behaviours most readily through experiences and the more visceral that experience, the more resonant the message. Thus, it was determined that the most effective way to highlight hearing was to create a visceral sensory experience. The concept to highlight hearing: remove the audio. We deprived people of audio during pivotal moments within their favourite television content.The execution began when a volume bar graphic, resembling the one remotely controlled within a television, mysteriously popped up on screen over actual content. The volume bar level on the graphic, under its own power, began tracking to the left (i.e. decreasing) while the broadcaster simultaneously lowered the actual program volume to zero. It was as if a ghost took over one’s remote.With the content inaudible, the bar morphed into an ad reading: ‘Are you having trouble hearing this?’ which transitioned to a Duracell ad in commercial time seamlessly linking the audio deprivation to the payoff ad which included a call to have a hearing test.
This media first required collaboration with network programming, creative, and audio teams ensuring precise coordinated timing across 13 networks in two languages to seamlessly execute within top programming such as live Toronto Blue Jays play-by-play and the Modern Family finale. The coordinated ‘soundblock’ was experienced by 40% of Canadians within the campaign’s first sixty minutes.
We also hijacked another hearing moment: when Shazam can’t ‘hear’ it serves this message: ‘Sorry, we didn’t quite catch that.’ At that instance users received a Duracell message.
Audio deprivation lead to outstanding results:
The volume bar execution greatly outperformed all other Modern Family advertisers on ad and brand recall: +37% and +66% respectively.
Duracell Twitter activity and Google search volume increased +63% and +43% respectively within 24 hours of the execution.
Unprecedented hearing aid battery sales outpacing the category by 9% during the campaign.