Cheers! encourages parents to talk to their kids about alcohol in new campaign via Y&R NZ

Cheers! has launched its new Y&R NZ designed online campaign, which aims to encourage parents to have more constructive and effective conversations with their teenagers around alcohol.

A tricky subject to tackle, Cheers! research found that teenagers think that their parents do well on the ‘sex’ talk, but struggle on the alcohol chat.

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The new Cheers! campaign supports this idea by offering the premise: “What if we talked about sex the way we talk about drinking.” The result is a series of funny and challenging videos that aim to get parents thinking about how they could tell the alcohol story better to their teenagers.

Says Tim Ellis, managing director, Wellington, Y&R NZ: “The key thing with this idea is that it plays off the insight that most parents think they’re really knowledgeable about alcohol and its affects – but in reality, they’re far less informed than they think they are. They can treat it somewhat lightly when talking with their teenagers – joke about hangovers or being too drunk, and even celebrate their past experiences and “war stories”. We wanted to get parents attention and reframe how they discuss alcohol and drinking with their teenagers, by asking them – imagine if we talked to our kids about sex like we talk to them about alcohol.”

Says Robert Brewer from Cheers!: “We can’t keep an eye on our teens the whole time, and we can’t pretend they won’t experiment with alcohol but what we do is can arm them with the knowledge to make good decisions around alcohol. This is what this campaign is about, breaking down traditional barriers and promoting better conversations.”

The online campaign will rollout on Facebook and TVNZ Ondemand with a 90, and three 15 second cuts. The campaign will be supported on cheers.org.nz with tips and ideas of how parents can better talk to their teens around the subject of alcohol.

Client: Cheers!

Senior Account Manager: Tom Frankish