With the abundance of misinformation that circles the media, Motion Sickness has partnered with Netsafe to launch a humorous campaign that tackles fake news.
Motion Sickness’ ‘Your News Bulletin’ campaign, focuses around a newsroom and presenters that report on increasingly fake news stories with clickbait and misleading headlines.
The aim is to lure viewers into visiting yournewsbulletin.co.nz which allows them to test their fake news knowledge and learn techniques that will help identify misinformation.
Commissioned by Netsafe, the campaign was created as a solution following a survey that revealed 52 percent of Kiwis surveyed admitted to have fallen for fake news.
The survey also found that 93 percent have heard of the term fake news, 48 percent are concerned about accidentally spreading it, and 14 percent mentioned reading misleading stories related to Covid-19.
Motion Sickness founder and creativ director, Sam Stuchbury, says the misleading informaiton caused by fake news can lead to anxiety for many people.
“Its a very intimidating, personal and charged topic often resulting in reasonably heated reactions. We felt using humour and satire in relation to fake new would help reduce some of the tension, making it easier for Kiwis to interact with the campaign and therefore tackle the issue head on.
“Simulation is often the best form of education,” says Stuchbury. “Immediately confronting people with decisions around fake news (can this be real?) and then walking them through the critical-thinking process, albeit with a humorous spin, is a powerful and practical way to get the point across”
The campaign has taken a fully-intergarted approach with ads rolled across TV, print, radio, outdoor and digital.
After only four days of launching, the campaign has already had 445,800 video views across Facebook, Instagram and Youtube and 11,300 visitors to the website. Your News Bulletin aims to challenge fake news for the next six weeks.
“The nature of our creative platform meant we were able to achieve impact by leveraging the mediums themselves, such as emulating a full page of a newspaper, to breaking “fake news” bulletins on the radio,” says Josh Hawke, Motion Sickness head of media.
“Whilst social media is often identified as the predominant vehicle for the spread of misinformation, research has shown that Kiwi’s are concerned about fake news being present across all media channels. As a result, including a wide array of media channels in our mix was key to ensuring we were speaking to our audience at all moments of this scepticism.”
