Virginity Map
Issue 15 | June 2010
Agency
Aim Proximity
Creative Team
Creative Director: Michael Barnfield; Senior Interactive Designer: Jason Vertongen; Senior Copywriter: Steve Anderson; Senior Art Director: David Reid; Interactive Designer: Theunis Groenewald
Production Team
Digital Producer: Mark Russell; Technology Planner: Ian Hulme; Digital Producer: Paul Shannon; Senior Developer: Paul Headington
Other Credits
Account Director: Victoria Pether, Paula Castle; Account Executive: Matt Frost; Marketing Manager: Aimee Glucina; Commissioner: Kathleen Anderson; Publicist: Tamar Munch
Date
April 2010
Background
Now in its second season, Go Girls is a popular New Zealand drama series with a young female audience. It had built a loyal following from season one but the show’s producers were keen get even more fans on board, especially as a ratings spike would improve their chances of getting the go-ahead for series three. With a limited budget they wanted to build buzz around the show beyond TV and get people talking. Since the show follows the lives and loves of a sassy young crew, so the idea had to capture some of their fun and flirtiness.
Idea
Because the plotlines of Go Girls often revolve around “who’s sleeping with who,” a racy website was created where users could not only find intimate knowledge about the show’s characters but they could share some of their own.
Using Google Maps as its navigation tool, The Go Girls virginity map encouraged visitors to the site to place a virtual pin on the spot of where they “lost theirs”. They could and add a rating and a commentary about the event, if they chose. Shy visitors could mark the location of their first bonk anonymously.
The map kicked off by showing where the main characters from the show had lost their respective virginities before, pin by pin, it filled with naughty confessions from the show’s fan-base.
Results
The Go Girls Virginity Map soon did have the people of New Zealand talking. It was a controversial idea that raised some eyebrows but definitely struck a chord with its target audience. To date the site has had more than 19,000 unique visitors and 1,731 pins have been placed on the map.
It seems all the chat about Go Girls has had a positive effect towards on-demand views at the TVNZ website too, rising from 14,000 the week prior to the Virginity Map launching to 24,000 two weeks after (a 70% increase). Oh, and by the way, Go Girls series three will go into production soon.
Our Thoughts
Know your target audience, this is a lesson I wish many more direct marketers would take to heart. Youth is obsessed with sex. Desperate for its first encounter, then for getting more of it to find out if they are any good at it, or not. Yet so much direct marketing to this demographic is about as interesting to them as a knitting pattern.
Kids don’t think sex is taboo. But middle-aged marketers often do.
I am reminded of the story of Keith Weed, now CMO for Unilever, who bought the original risqué Axe/Lynx work from BBH with the sentence, “I hate it. I’m sure it will be very successful.”