A School Band Hacks a Popular TV Show to Warn Against Underage Drinking Issues

Jul. 23, 2020

The alarming statistics suggests that Croatia is one of the countries with the highest youth drinking rates in Europe. Reportedly, 6.7% 13-year-old boys and 3.7% 13-year-old girls in Croatia said they had been drunk two or more times in their lives. How to raise awareness amongst teenagers and their parents of the damaging ramifications underage drinking will lead to?

Bruketa&Zinic&Grey Agency has created a campaign for Croatian Institute of Public Health and hacked the Supertalent Nove TV (Croatia’s Got Talent Show), the most popular TV show in Croatia among the target audience and devised a concept to send a strong message.

The Agency enlisted the cooperation of a talented high-school band Bonar. The band was one of the contestants on the Croatia’s Got Talent Show that qualified for the final. Everybody believed their song in the final would be the popular Opijum song by Magazin, a Croatian pop band.

To the surprise of the jury and the audience, they did sing the song but with new lyrics showing the dreadful effects of teenage alcohol consumption. At the end of their act, they strung a banner across the stage that read “Drinkers pay their way” and explained the underlying message of their song, without revealing it all yet.

Only after the media’s extensive coverage of their performance did the Croatian Institute of Public Health announce the Bonar band as the ambassador of their campaign, sharing the devastating current statistics about alcohol use disorder in adolescents in Croatia.

The Bonar Band’s message did not go unnoticed as they were the talk of the traditional as well as the social media. The new legislation was about to be discussed in the parliament, but due to the pandemic, the bill was stopped.