Humanaut’s ‘Skip the Chemicals’ Video Wins at 12th Annual Shorty Awards

Independent advertising agency Humanaut and client Organic Voices won a Shorty Award for the ‘Skip the Chemicals’ video in the Best Use of YouTube category during a digital ceremony on May 3rd. Now in its 12th year, the Shortys were the first awards show to honour social media. 

Organic Voices is a consortium of natural brands that aims to illustrate less is more when it comes to food ingredients. ‘Skip the Chemicals’ used humour and reverse psychology to illustrate this concept and get the message out to a wide audience on a modest budget. 

Humanaut created a 30-minute ad to serve as a metaphor for the bulky list of more than 700 unnecessary ingredients allowed to be used in conventional food products, but not organic ones. In ‘The World’s Most Skippable Ad,’ a happy couple washes dishes while singing those 700 chemical names show-tunes style, breaking the fourth wall several times and urging viewers to skip the ad and buy organic instead. Designed to be perversely entertaining, the ad runs through the full list if viewers insist on watching it—but the point is, why would they want to? It is akin to eating a bunch of empty ingredients with no nutritional value that could have negative effects on their health. It was placed on YouTube as preroll, so the client only purchased five-second increments of paid media—viewers clicked on a link if they wanted to watch more, and many did: The completion rate was 51%, and the average viewing length was 7:57 minutes. Ironically, ‘The World’s Most Skippable Ad’ has received 8.5 million views. 

By constantly evolving along with the changing landscape of social media, The Shortys recognise the most influential, popular, and culturally relevant brands, organisations, agencies, campaigns and influencers across social media.

Humanaut was also recently chosen by Ad Age as one of its 2020 A-List winners.