How do you encourage women to cut down their drinking when they don’t think they need to?

To acknowledge and de-stigmatise alcohol dependency, we needed to identify language that would tap into a common interest and provide a fun and engaging way to deliver serious health messages.

Through research of our target audience, we identified weight loss as a key driver to reduce and created: Driet: The Drinking Diet – a portmanteau (or linguistic blend of two words e.g. ‘Brexit’ or ‘Brangelina’) of ‘drink’ and ‘diet’.

The buzzword ‘Driet’ rebranded alcohol reduction and captivated our audience’s attention by highlighting calorific content of alcohol and potential weight loss benefits of reducing, providing relevant context to drive conversation. This offered a solution that was socially-acceptable, closely tied to the target audience’s desires rather than attracting to a problem, and aspirational for women to consider educational messaging around support available and seek help.

Implementation:

1. Target audience focus group and four 1:1 interviews to identify messaging / media channels

2. Suite of visual / informative materials to underpin The Driet campaign (tested against small target audience group), microsite, interactive game, twitter account and weekly e- subscriber newsletters

3. Media advisory board with UK consumer health / lifestyle journalists to educate / test positioning, Drinkaware and key spokespeople identified for press release and microsite quotes, as well as quantitative research / case studies to craft x2 news stories:

a. Mum’s the Word: middle-aged mums drinking more than their adult children

b. Drunkorexia: growing trend amongst British women of swapping calories in food for alcohol

Placement and scale:

• Mix of targeted and wide-scale outreach to top-tier national and regional media outlets

• Twitter posts / engagement to drive consumers to microsite (including search engine optimisation and paid promotion)

Timeline:

September 2015 – February 2016

Knowledge / consideration:

• Over one billion OTS from 72 pieces of coverage in print, broadcast and online news across England, Scotland, and Wales

• Online news coverage drove 20% of click-throughs to the microsite

• 100% of coverage contained at least one key message and 15% mentioned Driet

Outputs / business results:

• Microsite and media coverage dominated first page in Google’s search rankings of Driet

• Microsite received 7,800+ unique visitors and 13,500+ page views, resulting in 600+ click-throughs to Pharmacy2u website

Outcomes / awareness:

• Challenged the concept of ‘wine o’ clock’ and ‘dry January’, with target audience opting to ‘go on a Driet’ instead

• The Driet also spread to media in the United States and New Zealand, and was promoted by UK independent health centres e.g. The Belgravia Centre

• Strengthened relationship between Lundbeck and Drinkaware, with Drinkaware interested in taking on the campaign long-term