Ogilvy&Mather

Interactive work by Ogilvy's New York office for Vaseline Clinical Therapy called "Prescribe the Nation."

This interactive campaign used word-of-mouth, via the internet, to allow Vaseline Clinical Therapy users to "prescribe" their friends across the U.S. It started in Kodiak, Alaska, with one person sharing the product with her family and friends, and from there, the word spread to the entire town (now made up of 1,000 Vaseline users). What is unique about this campaign is that the website allows people to track the spread of "prescriptions" across the nation and see how each person was connected. There is also an Alaskan-themed sweepstakes, which is clearly illustrative of how well this clinical moisturizer works.

The only aspect of this campaign I feel a little weird about is the emphasis on prescriptions; something about "Prescribe the nation" makes me think of a bunch of pill-poppers, and people are already so dependent on modern medicine that "prescribing the nation" anything sounds like a bad idea. A part of the website allows people to interact with and learn more about "the people behind the prescriptions."...what? That just sounds so institutionalized, once again, it gives me the feeling that we are now just a bunch of prescription labels instead of people. Being able to track the growth of product users, one-by-one, is very informative for the brand and cool for people to follow on their own, but they really should have used better word choice.