Lacta is a chocolate brand under the umbrella of Mondelez which is only distributed in Greece and it is mainly intertwined with the concept of Love. Lacta has a very strong and distinct brand identity and every St. Valentine’s Day it comes out with a campaign related to love, usually in the form of branded entertainment (short films, infotainment, tv dramas etc.).
This year Lacta and Ogilvy Greece chose to celebrate Valentine ’s Day in a more simple yet powerful way. The campaign #ActForLove was launched few days before Valentine’s with a digital video and digital banners of 28 next door real couples, celebrating their diversity while at the same time pointing out their main key characteristic, their real love for each other.
So, was the Greek society ready to accept and integrate such a campaign? The couples presented in the campaign were a mix of gay couples, multinational couples, couples with special needs etc. The buzz that this campaign created was extreme in both positive and negative reactions. As it was anticipated, there was a huge backlash from the most conservative part of audience that was mainly focused on certain gay couples depicted in the campaign.
Was this a hard and courageous decision for a local brand? Well, Lacta followed the risky but lately popular way of social activism. Many brands have been campaigning based on socially conscious messaging. Nike’s “Dream crazy” and Gillette’s “We believe” campaigns are two recent examples of such bold brand activism.
For the Greek market it was the first time that a local brand took the initiative to talk to people about issues that society isn’t really ready to face openly, diversity and discrimination.
The audience’s reaction was really interesting, some praised the brand for such a bold stance to address the issue of diversity as a normality, while others accused Lacta for being offensive, showing “abnormality” as a regularity and promoting wrong role models to young people.
Although Greek people are somehow familiar with the concept of diversity, this campaign revealed how much work needs to be done in order to subconsciously relate to these concepts until such a campaign becomes nothing more but a promotion of a chocolate, rather than a social debate. Lacta was bold enough and ready to take the risk of addressing the masses with its values that are not as vague as Love, but as specific as the “different” girl or boy next door.
See also:
Lacta’s YouTube Chanel
#ActForLove Microsite
Invisible Environments 