The Brief
Create a campaign to bring smart-phone usage to the attention of 20-30 year olds. The young adults are in many cases in the process of transitioning between social expectations of teenagers, to those of working adults, who need to find a work/life balance currently at risk through smart phone use. It is important to put their usage in perspective.
Bring to the audience’s attention the potential reliance on their devices, and open their eyes to the bigger picture, by helping them reconnect with the real world and reduce distractions. In many cases, this might involve the introduction of boundaries and the understanding of who should be ‘in control’, man or machine.
Identified Problems
> Smart phones have become so readily available to the nation that we are rarely seen without them.
> Decline of the ability to maintain engagement in natural social environments.
> We no longer notice the interruption that smart-phones cause, we rarely question their appearance.
> Ability to lead to long term health problems, isolation, better connection Online than Offline.
The Solution
If unchecked our excessive screen time could shorten life spans by as much as 5 years (6%). To bring this issue to people’s attention and try and manage the problem, the integrated campaign will primarily introduce the issue on digital platforms by highlighting 6%, and secondarily suggest a better use of time through print/ out of home devices. The external campaign will highlight better ways of using your 6%.
The campaign is split into two halves, MINUS 6% (where the issue is highlighted and explained), and PLUS 6%, where people are encouraged to make better use of their 6%, get out there and do more.
The animation demonstrates how the application interferes with social media and brings the issue to the audience's attention.
A break-down of the process and further campaign imagery is visualised below:
Using a non-invasive approach, the campaign is present on social media smart phone applications. The last 6% of text posts and images are highlighted, disrupting the normal view of the screen and attracting curiosity. The screen is reduced by 6% by a coloured bar, highlighting phone usage by counting by the second, the percentage of life wasted on the screen each day.
The bar, when dragged up, reveals information about the campaign. The issue is highlighted and brought to the users attention, whilst the statistics and percentages are explained and put into perspective. The option is then to discover more about the issue, and how phone usage might reduce ones life, or skip this element and ‘take the pledge'.
Users are pledging to make better use of their 6%, to get out, and do more. After entering their name they can use the slider to choose how much they will restrict their phone usage, being able to opt for any time between 2.5 hours (the daily average) and 0 hours. Once submitted, the user is committed to trying to make better use of their 6%, and the campaign moves into it’s second stage: PLUS SIX.
Once pledged, the users have the ability to return to the previous activities on their phones. At any point the bottom bar can be swiped up to reveal the pledge. Text and images continue to be highlighted, but the colour change reminds the user about the pledge they have made. When the time limit that the user has set has nearly been used up, a pop-up will appear in warning that the phone will soon be inaccessible. This will encourage people to be more careful with their usage, spreading it over the day.
The Do More element of the campaign can be accessed through the pledge page, by swiping up. It responds to location and highlights on a map different social places that might be of interest in the area. When a point is selected a page opens to show the comparison between time spent on the phone, to time that could be spent in this location.
The pledge pop-up appears on social media the morning after pledging, generally, the audience would check their social applications before even getting out of bed, so this is the ideal location to remind them of the pledge they have taken. In order to promote the campaign, their personal pledges can be ‘shared with friends’ and their Do More locations can be advertised.
The exterior ‘anti-campaign’, shows the restrictions of 6% in real life: what life would be like if we removed 6%. The aim of the campaign is to bring the issue to peoples attention and help make the link between the campaign on their phones and how it could actually physically effect them. The visuals have been integrated into areas that people would consider unsociable, inconvenient, or possibly dangerous on a phone.
The ‘pro-campaign’ counters the Minus 6% campaign, offering better use of time. It visualises ‘giving back the 6%’, showing small steps to put down our phones and integrate back into society. It interacts with the Do More element of the campaign, and based on location will suggest points of interest around the area. The percentage is based on how long it would take to get to the location from seeing the campaign imagery, suggesting that even if you are out and about, you could still do that little bit more...
The poster campaign aims to make the damaging effects of phone use more personal and ‘human.’ The focus of the imagery is on ‘little moments’: the simple pleasures, that you might not think you’d miss, until they were gone. This concept is symbolic of the 6%, the number itself doesn’t seem like very much, but when put into perspective, can be quite powerful.
The absence of the vital element (the 6%) is highlighted through the use of pink lines, linking back to the imagery throughout the campaign. The intimacy of the cropped images, focuses the attention onto the missing areas, and reflects the privacy of the ‘simple pleasures’, each one personal to the consumer.
