Situation: Every year thousands of Danes travel to sunny destinations. Unfortunately, many of them return with sunburns increasing the risk of skin cancer, and every day, a Dane dies from cancer in the skin. Since Help a Dane launched in 2017 the Danes have changed their behavior in the sun to the better, but they seem to have forgotten all about the kids and last summer 40 % of all Danish kids returned from holiday with sunburns.

Brief:Within the universe of Help a Dane create awareness about kids and sun behavior targeting parents.

Objectives: The most crucial goal was hence to increase knowledge about sun protection amongst the Danes and get them to change their behavior in the sun when going on vacation with kids. Especially because the Danes are increasingly exposed when heading south, due to the fact that the sun’s rays are often much stronger than in Denmark.

One of the greatest strengths and forces of the Help a Dane universe is the fact that it connects across both boarders and cultures. Primary by acknowledging our differences and play around with language barriers.

We believe, and now know from the two previous years of Help a Dane campaigns, that the world is generally helpful and that humans wants to connect. Especially kids.

Kids knows no barriers and aren’t limited to language, boarders, politics or religion. They just want new friends to play with. But 4/10 Danish kids get sun burned when traveling to sunny destinations and sun burns costs sadness and tears and they therefore they are no fun to play with.

Therefore, we had kids from the Danes favorite holiday destinations, sun experts, to plea to the Danish kids about sensible sun behavior in order to avoid sun burns and being able to play and have fun.

The humorous nature of the campaign allows us to hold up a mirror to the Danes and show them how ridiculous it is to neglect sun protection. It’s an urgent reminder that invites them to play along and poke fun at themselves. Therefore, we filled the film with talking points in order to create conversations. We e.g. named the Danish boy Viggo Mortensen. It’s a regular Danish name but it happens to also be the name of a famous international actor, with Danish roots and media attention. This strategy sparked a great deal of curiosity towards the end of the film, as maybe the real Viggo Mortensen would appear. Also, we played with the different languages creating smiles and talking points within the film. Last we made sure to educate during the film, balancing the fine line of quirkiness and humor with respect of the seriousness of the topic.

The film aired at social media channels; Facebook and YouTube. The Danish parents are highly represented here and therefore we’re able to gain huge reach among the target group and very cost effectively as the social media platforms, especially Facebook, are great creating conversations.

The film launched just in time for the Danes to go on summer holiday and so we launched June 19th 2019, just as the Danish school holiday where about to start. Film aired 3 weeks.

To further promote the effort, families who travelled from Copenhagen Airport where given a goodie bag to help “Small Danes” stay protected in the sun.

And of course the campaign where supported by a more heavy PR strategy build around the very serious numbers of the report from the Danish Cancer Society stating our burning platform; the 40 % of all children returning from summer holidays with sun burns.

On a small media budget, we had to trust the content to travel among the parents – and so it did. Alone on Facebook the film reached over 2 million Danes, 64 % of these being reached organic due to great engagement. More than 8.000 shared the film and 3.400 commented or tagged other parents generating more than 35.000 reactions. YouTube also delivered nearly a million views and an amazing VTR. To sum it up the Danish parents loved the campaign. 90 % found the campaign very creative. 88 % liked it and stated the campaign got their attention and 73 % agreed the campaign where directed at them – despite we only addressed kids. 58 % stated they talked to friends or families about the campaign. 81 % gained more knowledge about sun behavior and most important 55 % will now pay more attention to protecting their kids inthesun