DETOXIFY

Länsförsäkringar Göteborg och Bohuslän - Detoxify (Case Study) | Campaign On TikTok, young people are exposed to content showing how they “should” look every 39 seconds. Not because they choose to, but because algorithms push engaging but toxic content, fuelling comparisons and reinforcing feelings of inadequacy and shame. As a result, harmful trends, extreme diets, and outrageous beauty hacks have become normalized in young people’s feeds. Resisting it is hard. A lonely, vulnerable teenager up against the world’s sharpest developers is not a fair fight. Länsförsäkringar Göteborg and Bohuslän have been fighting for young people’s mental health for over a decade, driven by the belief that strong young minds benefit both society and business. Instead of telling teenagers to quit social media, they gave them a way to hack their algorithms – with music. Detoxify is the world’s first algorithm-cleansing song. The custom-written song uses the iPhone's voice control feature to automatically make the algorithm kinder. The lyrics contain voice commands that guide the phone to open apps, search for positive content, and like videos. A single play generates enough interactions for the algorithm to prioritize more positive content and transform the feed. The campaign reached over 15 million views, and during the first month alone, 1.2 million potential detoxes were carried out. More importantly, young people began talking openly and sharing experiences about how algorithms affect their self-image. By using music as the medium, we reached young people directly in their feeds, where the song both highlighted the problem and served as the solution. The fact that it became a catchy earworm people couldn’t get out of their heads (sorry!), we see as a bonus. Credits: - Client: Länsförsäkringar Göteborg och Bohuslän - Advertising Agency: Stendahls - Film Studio: Qute - Music Company: Helmer Norrby Music Production - Social Agency: Butterfly Effect - Public Relations Agency: Manifest PR - Music/Sound Company: Ring Ring Music Supervision