Drinkaware: Play Your Night Right
Because teenagers are bad enough already: Art direction, copywriting and design.
Way back in 2009, this was the first proper creative campaign we did for Drinkaware. The aim was to stop students (especially new ones) from getting drunk and being idiots; we tackled it head on by coming up with Jekyll and Hyde style characters - one minute they're just dancing badly, the next minute they've got their shirt off and they're indiscriminately rubbing up against members of the opposite sex.
This was the first photoshoot I art directed, and it was frankly brilliant fun. Working with the always excellent Jyn San and Sean Malyon, we quickly grabbed the 'before' shots, and then turned to the dark side to capture those times when a night goes horribly wrong. Attention to detail was everything - I spent quite a while rubbing oil and ketchup into a used McDonald's bag and filling it with old pasta salad to get that unique bag-o-vom look, and chased the Runner around the studio to get the perfect action shot.
We cranked up the pun machine to create Top Trumps-esque categories for each character, and then shot films of real life Fighters, Sex Pests and Pukers for the campaign site. All together, it generated a surprising amount of on-site discussion from an age group who wouldn't normally engage with the messaging, so it was definitely worth a bit of running around.