In its first-ever advertising, PrivatizeMe LLC, Durham, N.C., targets seven disparate social sectors with little in common... other than a preference not to be targeted at all. They are: gun enthusiasts; porn consumers; college-or-higher-educated African Americans; people with STDs; people with personal hygiene issues; survivalists; and the LGBT. Ads for an eighth target market, the overweight, were rejected and did not run. PrivatizeMe is a browser add-on that removes cookies, making the attention-averse and their web histories invisible to and unreachable by the sites they visit.
The Twitter campaign was created by advertising agency The Republik, Durham, and media, in the form of paid Tweets, is managed by the client. The ads are in two formats, both of which are intended to address the viewer with discomforting directness. The first, “You forgot...,” is in the form of a digital shopping cart with some typically private item for purchase. The second, “You fit...,” is a stark, all-type summation of the viewer’s profile.
Starting this year, the client initiated serial ad buys for target audiences considered likely to value privacy, and then refocused on those audiences with higher response rates. Gun enthusiasts, for which the campaign has run both profile- and shopping cart-format ads, have had the highest response rate of any group. Porn consumers (shopping cart) have been second highest. The most recent ad, the profile-format “You have E.D.,” broke this month.
Creative credits go to The Republik creative director Robert West; associate creative director Matt Shapiro; and art director/copywriter George Lauinger. Additional design work was done by London-based Robert Burke.
Creative Credits:
AD AGENCY: The Republik, Durham, N.C.
CD: Robert Shaw West
ACD: Matt Shapiro
AD/CW: George Lauinger