Alberta Health Services has launched TheBigBurn.ca and a supporting ad campaign warning of the dangers of tanning just in time for high school graduation, when tanning bed use is typically at its highest amongst teenage girls.
The campaign by ZGM Collaborative Marketing of Calgary targets parents, teen girls and adults of influence such as teachers and coaches.
“Everyone knows that children under the age of 18 shouldn’t be smoking or drinking or doing drugs, but artificial tanning isn’t on people’s radar,” said Rob Fairhead, partner and director of client services at ZGM. “Yet the affects of artificial tanning can be just as hazardous – if not more hazardous – than some of those other issues.”
The site’s homepage shows a tanning salon that, with the correct mouse movement, flashes to a hospital room. Elements pictured in the salon – the tanning bed, a poster – serve as mouse-over points for further information.
A campaign print ad shows a smiling, well-tanned teenage couple dressed for grad. The girl is connected to an IV full of chemotherapy. The copy reads: “Use of tanning equipment before the age of 35 increases your risk of melanoma the most dangerous skin cancer by 75%.”
Posters are getting to people in places where their skin is most exposed, said Fairhead – hanging in Winners change rooms across Alberta.
Simplicity is a key element of the campaign, said Fairhead. ZGM developed the website using a three-pronged approach around awareness, education and action.
“It’s not very copy-heavy at all,” he said. “If we create awareness that this is an issue, people are going to click a little bit further and dig a little bit deeper and get to more meaty content as they go.”
The campaign is designed to run in Alberta for the next three years. The first phase targets mostly adults of influence and parents, while the second and third phases will focus more on a public service campaign directed at students and youth, said Fairhead.
Alberta Health Services is also running a public relations campaign and holding grad fashion shows and other youth-focussed events about artificial tanning in shopping malls in Calgary and Edmonton this spring.
“It’s a nice way to engage an audience that can be tough to engage,” said Fairhead.
