LET’S NOT GO BACK TO NORMAL LET’S NOT GO BACK TONORMAL TO CHALLENGE STATUS-QUO, HAVAS LONDON AND DUREX PUT THE IDEA OF “RETURNING TO NORMAL” TO BED AND USED THE PANDEMIC AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE OUTDATED IDEAS AROUND SEX AND PUSH FOR PROGRESS ON STI PREVENTION. NICK BOYLE, BUSINESS DIRECTOR AT HAVAS LONDON, TELLS US MORE How did the pandemic present Durex an opportunity to The campaign was a global endeavour, can you tell us a make a meaningful difference? little about its reach and the logistics of it? The pandemic provided a really interesting opportunity to the We created the campaign so that it could be implemented by brand, as it marked a massive change in behaviour from almost markets as they were emerging out of a lockdown. We made one day to the next, all centred around protecting your own a global master film that could flex if some more conservative health and those around you. This is exactly what we try and markets had legal challenges about the visuals, and we created get consumers to think about every day, so we thought there a huge amount of social assets that were either available must be a parallel we could draw. At the same time, lockdowns for markets to pick off the shelf, or assets that if they had across markets naturally meant that there was a break or at more localised budget they could adapt to make relevant to least massive slowing down of the transmissions of STI’s – we their market. We’re seeing the assets being used by different felt like if we had the right message, at this time, we could reallymarkets as they come and go, in and out of their own help reset the numbers of infections and their spread. lockdowns so it’s a campaign that we know will keep going. Why did the campaign hinge itself on the idea of a “reset,” How important is it for brands to not return to normal after and challenge the idea of “returning to normal?” this pandemic? At the time, there was a really clear cultural narrative about aNo brand can ignore 2020, just as no human can. Imagine if desire to return to normality, that the pandemic was a stopgap all brands pivoted from crisis marketing that acknowledged in our normal and unchanging lives, but we knew that our hardship and changes right back to run-of-the-mill creative. ‘normal lives’ carried lots of problems in sexual wellbeing thatConsumers would call BS. COVID has raised the bar for we were already trying to remedy or fight against. As a brand transparency from brands, and opened a door to being we stand to Challenge the Norms, so it only seemed natural more purposeful in the messaging we put out. We are in a that if it was normal to want to go back to normal, but normal global recession with a pandemic that still threatens life as we wasn’t good enough; then we had to challenge that. know it. Brands must earn consumers’ trust and choice like never before. It’s a great time to be very relevant to consumers who are all united by one thing, but at the same time we’re What was the concept behind the storytelling in this seeing all these brands try and bring this one, albeit colossal, campaign and its casting? part of our lives into every ad we see, so it also means brands have to try and work really hard to cut through that noise. We thought this was a great opportunity to push the reset button and say the opposite of what everyone else was saying. We knew people were excited to come out of lockdown, and there was a lot of social noise about the sexual freedom that people would experience again at the end of lockdown, so we wanted our campaign story to really talk to people in this moment. As a brand we want to be as inclusive as possible of people that have sex, so it was really important that we could represent as many people as possible in this film, as well as representing what lockdown looked like for lots of people. 3 DARE!