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Since 1957, Which? has been the UK’s consumer champion, campaigning on their behalf, and providing expert advice and reviews. But in recent years, other sources of consumer advice had begun to threaten that leading role.
So, the objective was improve Which?’s relevance with UK consumers, by raising awareness of how they are campaigning and offering help to consumers on a number of current impact areas.
#JustNotBuyingIt
A Which? investigation revealed 2/3rds of 250 products purchased from online marketplaces failed safety tests. And in the last year alone, 400,000 people in the UK lost £3.2bn to scams facilitated by online adverts – an increase of 33% on the previous year.
So, we helped Which? call for new legislation to force tech giants to do more to protect online shoppers.
So, we helped Which? call for new legislation to force tech giants to do more to protect online shoppers. The multimedia campaign encourages the public to sign a petition urging greater protection from online scams, dodgy reviews and dangerous products, accompanied by the endline: "#JustNotBuyingIt".
Awareness of the issue and relevance shot up during the campaign, and it drove over 80,000 signatories to the petition. Crucially as a result of Which?'s campaigning, when the final bill was enacted in October 2023, it included an obligation for tech platforms to remove harmful content, including scams.
See Sales In A Different Light
Black Friday sales, with their time-sensitive, flashy sales messages can force even the most responsible shopper to abandon their conscious consumerism for low prices.
All too often, this panic buying leads to regret, with poor quality products quickly breaking or being left unused (almost 80% of items bought during Black Friday ending up in landfill).
Which? wanted to urge consumers not to be dazzled by these and instead, shop more sustainably and smarter for their wallets and for our planet.
In the lead up to Black Friday, we tactically located areas where consumers would be shopping with DOOH poster sites that used neon messaging to encourage them to see the sales in a different light.
Hailed as ‘way ahead of the curve’, Which? achieved their largest weekly total of online sign-ups in 2021 during Black Friday weekend. The campaign drove over 1.5m sessions to the Sustainability and Black Friday Hubs, well over their initial target of 688k.
Online Safety
Consumers are often not as protected as they think when shopping in the sales online, and Which? wanted to demonstrate that deals that seem too good to be true, often are.
The campaign aimed to drive awareness of the issues of product safety, scams and disinformation, whilst establishing Which? as the consumer champion, helping them with useful advice to keep themselves safe when shopping online.
The work featured a range of ‘Shopping Fails’, which emphasized how different purchases can look online compared to in reality.
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The campaign ran on VOD, print, social & digital
Scammers
With a rich history of tackling scams and in response to the increased scam victims of COVID, the UK’s consumer champion Which? promoted their free ‘Scam Alerts’ email service.
In order to help less people fall victim to scams and be aware of scams circulating, St Luke’s enlisted animation giants Smith & Foulkes to create 3 characters who represent some of the most common scams
We took three of the most popular scams doing the rounds and personified them into cunning characters: The Bank Impersonator, The Identity Thief and The Savings Swindler, who would do everything in their power to prevent people from learning about the service. Each of these appeared across OOH, print & social
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Whether that was encouraging people to look away from our press executions or trying to destroy the mural they were placed on in Brixton, our scam characters continued to be as deceitful in our advertising, as they are in real life.
The campaign helped to achieve over 300,000 sign ups to the Scam Alert service over the period of the campaign
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