SDIA Project
Issue 16 | September 2010
Agency
Shalmor Avnon Amichay/ Y&R Tel Aviv
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer: Gideon Amichay; Executive Creative Director: Tzur Golan; Creative Director: Amit Gal; Copywriter: Geva Kochba; Art Director: Shirley Bahar; Executive Interactive Director: Guy Poreh; Interactive Copywriter: Nadav Raviv; Interactive Account Supervisor: Dana Cogan
Other Credits
Executive Client Director: Adam Avnon; Account Supervisor: Shiran Chen Barazani; Account Managers: Galia Ashri, Esti Smilg; Executive Interactive Director: Guy Poreh
Date
2010
Background
With the number of HIV cases in Israel showing an upward trend, as opposed to the rest of the world, the AIDS Task Force needed to get people, teenagers in particular, who had had enough of the AIDS issue, talking about it again.
Idea
The challenge was to get people to listen to a message they didn’t want to hear. The medium which seemed best suited to the task was radio. But rather than create ads to fill the breaks on radio stations, the agency wondered if they couldn’t reach their audience through what radio is all about: music.
A band named SDIA was created and their first release was a song called ‘Going all the way’. This was sent it to all the radio stations, many of whom began to give it airtime. Many DJ’s began asking questions about the mystery band.
On World Aids Day all was revealked. The band’s name is AIDS spelled backwards. What had been innocent radio content became a meaningful message immediately.
Results
Before SDIA’s secret was revealed the song had had over 8 hours of radio airtime.
It got to No.4 in Israel’s music chart and to No.9 on the Most Downloaded Ringtones list.
It was played once every hour in 300 coffee shops.
And was even used as the wake-up theme on Israel’s most-watched TV show, Big Brother.
After SDIA’s secret was revealed:
The AIDS issue became breaking news and a top media story that earned the Task Force a second wave of free media coverage on National TV, radio, newspapers, the internet and MTV Europe.
On World Aids Day, media coverage was +75% against 2009 figures.
Our Thoughts
Music and musicians have been edging ever closer to advertising with P Diddy, for instance, writing ‘Pass the Courvoisier’ and Fergie of The Black-Eyed Peas said to have received $4m to write a song about Candies clothing. But there haven’t been many examples of advertising going the other way and a piece of original music, composed for commercial purposes becoming best-sellers. ‘I want to teach the world to sing’, I suppose, the New Seekers tune for Coca-Cola. And now SDIA.
What we admired about this idea is that there would have been dozens of ‘what ifs’ before it ran. What if no-one plays it? What if no-one hears it? But in advertising, as in so much of life, nothing ventured is nothing gained.