NSLC’s “get home safely” campaign was so popular that three other provincial liquor boards adopted the irreverent approach.

You’ve seen the images before: yellow tape, white crosses, and flashing red lights glistening on rain-soaked streets, while a “don’t drink and drive” voiceover gives way to the forlorn sound of a child crying. The consequence-focused social media campaigns produced by countless liquor corporations worldwide are familiar enough, sliding comfortably across our television screens around the holiday season. But last year the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation (NSLC) and its social responsibility advertising agency partner, Revolve, smashed the conventions of the genre with a sweaty back, a wheelbarrow, and a donkey. Anti-drinking-and-driving ads will never be the same. 

“Our social responsibility campaigns are up against a lot of clutter and noise during the holiday season,” says Rick Perkins, NSLC’s vice-president of marketing and communications. “So in my brief to the agency, I said we had to do something really unusual, but with the same view of getting home safely—plan ahead, be smart, arrange for a ride.” 

The target audience for the ads was the notoriously hard-to-engage 19-to-34 male demographic, who are media savvy and particularly averse to being preached at. Revolve was up to the challenge; it developed a multimedia campaign that included television, outdoor, and print ads; contesting; guerrilla marketing; an extensive online component; and partnerships with the Restaurant Association of Nova Scotia, MADD Canada, and the RCMP. The tag for the campaign was “There are lots of ways to get home safely—all you need is one.” And at its heart were three funny, fictional, small business operations to prove the point. Burly Joe offered piggyback rides (“You’ve got my back”), Wheelbarrow Willie (“You call, we haul”), and Donnie’s Donkeys (“Let our ass get yours home”). 

“We wanted to create a sustainable platform that could work beyond the holiday season, and one that would really differentiate the NSLC in a category of sameness. We wanted to attack this from a different angle,” explains Nelson Angel, the vice-president of Bedford, N.S.–based Revolve. “NSLC really trusted us and let us do our work. They took a huge leap of faith in a big idea, and it paid off.” 

The campaign, which Perkins says was worth about $250,000, far exceeded every target the NSLC had set for it. Results included 75,945 web hits in six weeks (the objective was 60,000); contest entries topping 5,200 (the objective was 200); website downloads and send-to-a-friend reaching almost 6,000 (the objective was 2,000); roughly 30,000 MADD pin card contest entries; 3,280 calls to the toll-free line (the objective was 1,000); and more than $80,000 worth of earned local, regional, and national media coverage. 

“For me, the campaign had the desired impact,” says Perkins with obvious satisfaction. “I wanted these little businesses to be wacky but on the edge, so somebody watching it would say, ‘Is that real?’ We got calls from people trying to find out if the ads were real. One man in Yarmouth called asking about a Wheelbarrow Willie franchise.” 

Revolve and the NSLC then took the campaign and, in an unprecedented move, offered it to the three other Atlantic liquor boards—Alcool N.B. Liquor, Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Corporation, and the P.E.I. Liquor Commission—allowing them use of the creative. “We were able to pick and choose what we thought was appropriate for our clientele and what we could afford to execute,” says Linda Stafford, the social responsibility and publications officer for Alcool N.B. Liquor in Fredericton. “I don’t think we could have done a campaign of that significance at that time in our organization. This allowed us to piggyback on NSLC’s experience and knowledge. And the reaction in our marketplace was huge. We knew that the campaign would resonate with our target, but it really had mass appeal. I have never seen anything like it before.” 

The iconoclastic “Lots of ways” campaign has also garnered the attention of awards juries, winning a silver, a merit, and the judges’ Choice Craft Award for best casting at Marketing Magazine’s Marketing Awards; a finalist honour at the Bessies; a Gold Quill Award for Excellence from the International Association of Business Communicators; and four Applied Arts magazine awards. “In order to connect with your audience, you’ve got to engage them,” says Angel. “In order to engage, you’ve got to be interesting and relevant. This was an irreverent approach to encouraging people to get home safely. But we don’t dismiss for a second that this campaign had to stop people from drinking and driving.” 

Drinking and driving kills people, and, although many of us may have become inured to the sound of a child crying in the typical campaigns, it is a horrifying reality. Rethinking the category and cutting through the clutter with messages that could help save lives is marketing at its finest. And that’s why the importance of Joe, Willie, and Donnie—and the teamwork of the NSLC and Revolve that brought them to life—can’t be underestimated.