Im sure all of us have our favorite brands - these might be brands that provide products or service you appreciate and enjoy or it could just be the entire package including the way the brand speaks to its consumers. One of my favorite brands falls into the latter category purely for their seriously clever and more importantly consistent communications with their consumers. The brand - Durex
Durex in my mind has always had some of the most constant and on brand communications out there. They have also often been ahead of the curve - exhibit a) The Durexhibit which was a crowdsourced poster campaign then held way back in 2008. With an emphasis more on the message than the product the project was launched and hosted on a microsite Durexhibit.com and basically invited 16-24 year olds to create posters that would 'Persuade other young adults to think twice before risking unprotected sex"
To me what made this project even better was the way the brand tied the project into National Condom Week in the UK. This imidetinaly put Durex in a good light and added their voice to those of educators, government officials, health care professionals, and NGO workers have been trying to get the message out for years - its a plus that it becomes a giant plug for their own products! The winners were decided by an online vote - there were 19 runners up and one winner who took away £500 cash and £200 in Durex products - that was out of a final pool of 500 submissions
The above posters by Samuel Michael took the ultimate prize but there were tons of other fantastic designs submitted - see below. What really struck me about this project is the way Durex managed to keep their brand image intact while getting young people to talk about safe sex and in the process get highly aquatinted with Durex products. By letting young people "do the talking" they managed to get some great work out of their consumers and keep their young brand image alive… and that was way back in 2008. Pretty cool eh?
