The International OCD Foundation – Escape the Loop

Baggrund

OCD is a term commonly used, but not commonly understood. Thanks to pop culture, it is thrown around casually when referring to being overly tidy or organized. But OCD isn’t an adjective - it’s a serious mental health disorder causing people to suffer from intensely negative and intrusive thoughts as well as repetitive actions – and the first signs typically show when you’re a teenager. For young people, early diagnosis and treatment are essential. However, most don’t seek help as they aren’t aware of the symptoms. So how could we create OCD awareness and make teens seek treatment before their OCD worsens?

The challenge was to change the perception around the stereotyped term, and to help suffering youths break the vicious cycle at an early stage by using a creative approach in a campaign that speaks directly to them.

Løsning

To create OCD awareness among youths, a major challenge was to find a platform and visual language that teens can relate to. From the insight that youths often use GIFs to express a feeling or emotion, combined with the fact that a GIF per definition is a repetitive loop, the GIPHY-based campaign “Escape the Loop” was born.

Tapping into the pop-cultural language of GIFs, we flooded GIPHY with situations covering the most typical compulsive actions. But we didn't just upload ordinary GIFs. No, we basically hacked the medium, GIPHY, by uploading MP4 files instead of .gif files. This was a game changer because it enabled us to create longer narratives, which start with repeating actions as any GIF would, but then the actions would unfold - ending up with our campaign message showing that there is a way out of the vicious loop of OCD.

We developed more than 50 small films, flooding GIPHY with situations covering the most typical compulsive actions, such as opening and closing a door, aligning things, checking that the stove is off, and excessive counting. And because of the MP4 hack, we could let every loop evolve and carry a hidden message about the specific symptom of OCD portrayed in the film, followed by a call to action.

Furthermore, we tagged each of the GIFs with relevant teenager search terms. This let our message appear in thousands of daily searches on GIPHY, turning the platform into our free media channel.

Every loop linked to our campaign site where we could educate teens of signs of OCD, as well directing them to local helplines by geo-targeting.