After ‘Adolescence’ Droga5 Dublin, part of Accenture Song Urged Parents To Pay Attention

When Netflix’s mini-series ‘Adolescence’ premiered this March, it caused not a stir but a full-on cultural hurricane. It racked up 114 million views in less than a month with its timely and gripping subject matter – a 13-year-old-boy gets arrested for murdering a schoolmate – and confronting single-shot cinematography.

The show started a lot of conversations and parents everywhere wondered how they can best support their own teenagers in a difficult, transitional period in their lives. Working with The SOAR Foundation – an Irish charity supporting young people – Droga5 Dublin, knew it had a short period of time to meaningfully add to the cultural moment of ‘Adolescence’ and offer teenagers and parents alike support and resources.

Building on the successful and brutally honest film, ‘It’s Just a Phase’, which tackled how anxiety-driven adolescence is, the Droga5 Dublin team created the ‘Face Not Recognised’ campaign in just seven days. Creative director Stephen Rogers revealed that speed was everything and the insight behind ‘face not recognised’ was fuelled by a timely coincidence when, one morning, his own phone had trouble recognising him due to tiredness.

As well as targeting parents in spaces like cinemas and supermarkets, the campaign spoke to teenagers directly on the platform most can be found on: TikTok. Using SOAR’s trained Youth Crew, teenagers were addressed authentically and engagingly in their native environment to ensure that SOAR’s message was delivered with the most impact. LBB chatted with Stephen to learn how the reactive campaign came together.

LBB> What kind of work were you already doing with The SOAR Foundation and what main issues/themes did you address?

Stephen> We’ve had a long relationship with The SOAR Foundation that started way back in 2017. At that time, we worked closely with the team to develop a campaign to raise awareness of the most anxiety-driven time in anyone’s lives: adolescence. The very honest campaign film, ‘It’s Just a Phase’, shot by director P.O.B., was written with the help of a group of Irish teenagers and is still one of my favourite pieces of work.

LBB> What inspired the concept of the ‘Face Not Recognised’ campaign, and how did it aim to address parental concerns about the issues raised by ‘Adolescence’?

Stephen> We knew SOAR had something valuable to bring to the conversation; we just needed to find a way to talk to parents about recognising subtle behavioural changes in their child that only they would notice. As a dad of a 10-year-old boy, the show had a huge impact on me personally. It made me feel ill equipped for what might be ahead and it was clear by glancing online that other parents around the world were feeling the same. And the spark for the final idea came when my phone didn’t recognise my face one morning (I was very, very tired).

LBB> How did the campaign leverage the cultural moment of Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ to resonate with its audience?

Stephen> Timing was everything. The conversation around ‘Adolescence’ had moved past just awareness of the issues and parents were clearly panicked about what they should do if they noticed changes in their teenager. Our OOH specifically targeted parents in supermarkets and cinemas. On TikTok, the SOAR Youth Crew joined the conversation and gave authentic advice and support through their content.

LBB> How quickly did it come together to capitalise on the zeitgeist?

Stephen> Very. From having the idea, to the campaign being out in the world was seven days in total. We presented to Tracey Dollard, CEO of SOAR on Friday, cast our teenager Aaron on Monday, and shot with Rich Gilligan on Wednesday. Every single person who touched the idea brought a sense of urgency and momentum to it, which was vital in helping SOAR be hyper-relevant and immediately offer parents and teenagers support.

LBB> What strategies were employed to authentically engage teenagers, particularly through platforms like TikTok and school environments?

Stephen> SOAR is a very unique organisation. They train young adults to deliver their workshops which means their facilitators have a real understanding of teenage realities; so they never fall into the trap of talking down to them. This made engaging with teenagers on TikTok much easier. All we had to do was brief a team of young facilitators on the campaign and the content we needed and they could do the rest authentically and honestly.

LBB> How did the campaign balance the dual objectives of raising awareness among parents while directly supporting teenagers?

Stephen> Our central idea was relevant to both parents and teenagers. Parents are primed to notice changes in their teenagers but equally when teenagers go through changes, they can see it in themselves. How and where we showed up needed to be adapted to meet both audiences wherever they were and have a CTA that was bespoke to them. We developed a webpage for the campaign and visits more than tripled in the few days after we went live, showing that parents did really need the support.

LBB> Do you have further plans to help The SOAR Foundation continue addressing these issues?

Stephen> Absolutely. SOAR does phenomenal work and the issues and challenges teenagers are facing are only getting more complex, and if I’m honest, terrifying. Access to porn, online bullying, loneliness, mental health, misogyny… to name just a few. The Droga5 Dublin team are all in to help where we can.

LBB> Is there anything else that you would like to share with LBB about the campaign?

Stephen> Two quick things: If you are a parent reading this with a teenager, go to soar.ie and see the work that they do. Schools can book one of their peer-to-peer workshops there and they have a database of 360 organisations providing care, support and counselling for young people and families throughout Ireland. And secondly, if there are any potential corporate sponsors out there, SOAR gets very little governmental funding to allow them to do the amazing work they do, so please consider sponsoring them.