Worryingly, 47% of millennials aren’t using condoms when having sex with somebody new. Scare tactics highlighting STI’s don’t work. We needed to do things differently and remind them about the bigger, life-changing consequence – an unwanted baby. Rather than hit them with more serious facts, we had to engage with them in a fun and relevant way.

We also had another challenge to overcome, Skyn were the number two or number three brand of condoms in most markets, so we needed to generate the same brand fame and awareness the market leaders have but without the huge advertising budget.

We brought our contraception to Facebook and created a digital tool that blocks baby photos on your newsfeed and swaps them for things you’re actually interested in, like food or sports. We named it The Baby Blocker and uploaded it to the Google Chrome Webstore. This browser extension is designed to ‘hack’ Facebook and hijack their algorithm, which is what they use to identify and tag what’s in every photo uploaded to their website.

We then search for relevant tags like ‘baby’ or toddler’ and block baby images from a user’s newsfeed. It tracks how many babies you’ve blocked in real time and lets you share the tool with all of your friends.

No other age group uses Facebook more than millennials, they spend 6 hours per week on the platform. But now the older generations are more connected than ever, they’re sharing more than ever too. Uploading billions of baby images onto Facebook every year. We discovered that Facebook gathers data on all images uploaded to its website, so using this data we turned it into Skyn’s advantage.

Also, because messages about STD’s tend to be ignored, Skyn decided to inform the younger generations about the condom’s original purpose – preventing conception. So a social media platform overwhelmed with babies seemed the perfect place for a condom brand to engage with young people and prove the effectiveness of our product. However, thousands of other brands are competing for their attention on the platform, so in order to stand out we needed to utilize Facebook in a way that’s never been done before.

To make it readily available for the whole world, Baby Blocker was uploaded to the Google Chrome Webstore, so users could download it wherever they are. We created a social media campaign to drive awareness, which used a launch film and sponsored social ads that targeted young adults because they are the most susceptible to seeing unwanted baby photos on their Facebook newsfeed.

To get the world talking about it, we timed our launch with the most famous birth of the year, Prince Harry and Megan Markle’s bundle of joy. Maximising our impact and pushing The Baby Blocker beyond conventional channels.

Baby Blocker didn’t just achieve brand fame, it made a dent in culture. It was talked about on every continent and beyond with a global reach of 197,000,000. Broadcast on international news and published in press around the world including The Guardian, Fox News and Elle Magazine. We were a hot topic on popular radio shows, podcasts and social media, and we even made it to the front page of Reddit.

Not only did the media love it, The Baby Blocker users did too, as it was downloaded in over 75 countries with thousands of loyal users blocking baby after baby. In fact, they racked up a year’s worth of user time in the first 3 months. Skyn went from an unknown brand to GQ Magazine’s Best All-Around Condom 2019.