The Situation:

Four weeks into COVID-19 quarantine meant four weeks of no sex if you were single. According to the Chicago Tribune, 53% of young adults surveyed at the time broke quarantine to have a sexual encounter. Naturally, they turn to what they know: their exes. Trojan wanted to encourage horny singles to stay home and safe. And sexy.

The Brief:

Give singles quarantining at home the confidence to sexually explore themselves safely from home.

The Objectives:

Our goal was to empower more singles to pleasure themselves with Trojan instead of their past hookups.

Sext Us Instead is a social campaign designed to make staying home sexy. If horny singles felt tempted to break quarantine for ?? or text an ex for some ??, then they could DM us a ?? on Twitter instead. We then hooked them up with self-love supplies, which was a helpful way to get people to try Trojan’s new lubricants and vibrators. It was our way of making sex safer, something we’ve been doing for over 100 years.

Trojan is a sex positive brand whose mission is to keep sex pleasurable and safe. Their core audience consists of young ??????, ages 18-24. With the ?? shutting down and the possibility of having sex anytime soon looking grim, Trojan refused to abandon them. Not now. And not when Trojan has a new variety of lubes and vibrators in their portfolio for solo pleasure. To get these new products into consumers ? while also encouraging safe behavior, Trojan took to social media where single people were venting about their sexual frustrations and turned their Twitter DM into a new media platform.

On April 15, four weeks into lockdown, we tweeted “Physical distancing got ya lonely? Don’t text your ex. DM us an ?? emoji. We’ll send you a vibe or some lube so you can self-love.” Our inbox flooded with aubergine emojis and our product was given away in two days, so we re-stocked and gave away a second batch of product within 48 hours. With minimal paid media, we gave away thousands of self love products and spread the message that self love > sexting your ex, every time.

We got far more ?? , ??, & ?? than we had expected. In the first week alone we received 4,675 direct messages. We even received a handful of nudes which was not fun for our social media team, but fun for us to report in this submission. By week two, we nearly doubled the amount of sexts at 8,149 direct messages. We gave away thousands of self love products and successfully got 12,824 people to sext Trojan over their ex.

On Twitter, Trojan saw a 7% increase in direct interactions with consumers. Engagement rates on Instagram performed at +4% higher than Trojan’s engagement benchmark.

The campaign successfully earned pickup from Cosmopolitan.com, Askmen.com and LAtimes.com.