When I was a kid, the pinnacle of comedy was this guy who used to bring his lunch to school in airplane barf bags. He’d ask his dad to bring them home from business trips, so he could collect and use them. It was never not funny.
This new 13-minute doc called The Last Barf Bag, is an ad from Dramamine aimed to pay tribute to airplane sick bags. Well, sort of. The premise of the ad is that Dramamine’s motion sickness pill works so well, it’s making the barf bag obsolete.
Created with agency FCB Chicago, the ad tells us the story of the barf bag through the perspectives of several enthusiast collectors. There’s Bob Grove, who’s collected the framed barf bags lining his walls since 1967. Or Steve Silberberg, who is the curator of an air sickness bag museum, and has personalized Maine car plates that read “BARF BAG.”
It’s a fun, kooky approach to a tough category. Let’s face it, when it comes to marketing hype, motion sickness pills aren’t exactly sneakers. But here, Dramamine has found a quirky and compelling angle, and the result is absolutely charming.
The campaign represents the largest ad investment since parent company Prestige Healthcare acquired the brand in 2010. Since then, Dramamine has boosted its marketshare in the motion sickness category from 30% to 60%.
What’s up, doc?
The Last Barf Bag is also the latest example of the documentary-style ad format. The most common use of the brand doc is by outdoors brands like Yeti, REI, or Patagonia, that use it as a way to highlight the adrenalin, adventure, and issues of nature. But Dramamine joins a shorter list of perhaps the most unexpected brand docs.
Like in 2016, when digital security brand Norton worked with agency Grey to create “In Search of the Most Dangerous Town on the Internet,” a 20-minute doc on a cyber crime hub in Romania. Or “Up There,” a doc made by Stella Artois and agency Mother, about the artists of hand-painted mural ads.
One of my favorites is Werner Herzog’s 2016 feature doc, Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, which was actually an ad for cybersecurity brand Netscout.
No ad nausea
Dramamine manages to make its point about its product—it works!—while using the eclectic nature of the barf bag to make us laugh, but it also taps into our inner design nerd. It’s impossible not to catch a glimpse of these appreciate the graphic design behind what is broadly considered an ephemeral or ignorable tool. I mean, the reindeer barfing ice cubes graphic? Put that on a t-shirt. The brand has actually gone a step further and designed its own barf bag collection to be used for other tasks, like, say, a school lunch.
The overall result is a piece of brand work that, unlike a lot of ads, doesn’t make you dry heave a little bit.