LCBO
Deflate The Elephant

Simple

Working with Due North Communications, the goal was to empower and educate Ontarians on how they can prevent friends from drinking and driving.

Surprising

A 3D digital elephant was created to represent ‘The Elephant In the Room’ – the difficult subject of stopping a person who thinks they can drive after they’ve been drinking. With this icon, Ontarians were quizzed and educated via an interactive scenario-based environment on how to deal most effectively with these situations.

Success

The social responsibility initiative, which was further supported through in-store and mass media, garnered a buzz from consumers and the media.. This ingenious approach to messaging and education even received personal kudos from Premier Dalton McGuinty.

READ THE BLOG POST

CAMPAIGN ELEMENTS

WEBSITE

In 2009 the LCBO introduced the Deflate the Elephant campaign. The concept was simple and borne from the insight that the largest barrier faced when stopping a friend from drinking and driving was embarrassment. It compared stopping a friend from drinking and driving to "the elephant in the room"; a popular idiom that represents a difficult or embarrassing issue that is obvious to everyone but sometimes ignored.

On the microsite hosts could access useful information and tips on responsible hosting. The site's main feature was an interactive experience that put users in a hosting situation where they needed to stop a friend from possibly drinking and driving. To ensure the situations were relevant to the target, two different scenarios were created; Sports Night and Dinner Party. Once the consumer made a selection they were given a variety of options to help them speak up and stop their friend from drinking and driving. Useful tips and facts were seeded throughout the experience to aid and educate.