Using comedy to roast tanning culture

The brief: Melanoma Institute Australia wanted to fight the rising popularity of tanning culture on social media – e.g. the supremely stupid ‘sunburn challenge’ on TikTok.

The answer: work directly with TikTok and use their influence on comedic influencers to throw some shade at tanning, and attach “that’s cooked” pop-up warnings below all tanning-related content (“cooked” being Aussie slang for “f*cked up”).

The plot twist: TikTok decided to up the ante for the campaign launch by announcing a ban on all tanning content across the platform.

The result: a gargantuan amount of impressionable eyeballs, a lot of great press and a giant shift in the way tanning is treated by social media platforms – and hopefully more prevention of the world’s most preventable cancer.