The Last Barf Bag

Background: Dramamine is the #1 anti-nausea brand in the US and for 75 years has been America’s go to solution for everything nausea related. But by 2024, the brand faced new challenges from generics and new entrants to the category were threatening our #1 status. As an aging OTC healthcare brand with a limited budget, Dramamine had to reassert its leadership with a non-traditional approach to resonate with consumers in a new way. Our research into the brand uncovered an incredible coincidence: both the barf bag and Dramamine were invented in 1949. As 2024 marked the joint 75th anniversary for both the brand and the barf bag, we couldn’t help but notice that Dramamine was thriving while barf bags were dying – a testament to the brand’s effectiveness. But what about the barf bag? Underused and underappreciated, barf bags—along with their admiring collectors, community and industry—fell victim to the success of the brand. That made us think: What if we reminded the world how effective Dramamine is by saying goodbye to the industry we are accidentally killing? Creative Idea: Dramamine, the #1 anti-nausea brand in the US, is so effective at preventing nausea that it ended the need for barf bags. That made us think: What if we reminded the world how effective Dramamine is by saying goodbye to the industry we are accidentally killing? So we set out to pay tribute to a fellow icon of nausea with The Last Barf Bag, an integrated campaign built around giving the barf bag a grand farewell since Dramamine has barfing covered. We launched with a documentary that explores every corner of the barf bag universe and premiered the film at a museum exhibit in New York City, where hundreds of people shared in the experience of celebrating and paying tribute to the barf bag. The museum exhibit premiered the film, displayed the private collections of the four collectors featured in the documentary—with one of the star collectors from the film as a docent—and showcased a special commissioned fashion design made entirely out of barf bags. Everyone from niche enthusiasts to media and influencers to students to general passersby came to admire the collections, watch the film, and help to realize the potential of barf bags in a barfless world. We also designed an e-commerce platform that imagines a better future by selling repurposed bags for everything but barf—all to show people the impact and efficacy of Dramamine in an unexpected way. Insights & Strategy: The strategy was simple: Celebrate the barf bag Dramamine needed to reframe the conversation and elevate beyond functional efficacy alone. The strategy was built around a simple but compelling truth: Dramamine’s superior effectiveness had been so consistent over the years that it led to the gradual decline of barf bags, the iconic and once-ubiquitous method for dealing with motion sickness. Reframing the enemy could flip the script on OTC norms Instead of getting bogged down in comparisons with generics or newer products, Dramamine took a bold stance. It sidestepped competitors and declared ownership over the category it had created. The effort was designed to shift the conversation from competing claims of symptom relief to an audacious celebration of the brand’s effectiveness and dominance. Execution: Dramamine paid tribute to barf bags everywhere through immersive and entertaining activations. Our documentary The Last Barf Bag: A Tribute to a Cultural Icon explores every corner of the barf bag universe: from pilots, boat captains, and real people telling their barf stories to the heroes of the film, the barf bag collectors. We traveled across the country to interview the top barf bag collectors in America, documenting their passion and showcasing their impressive collections of bags from around the world. We also wove in the narrative unfolding within the Dramamine headquarters—the realization that they’ve been killing the barf bag—to create a film that seamlessly blends culture and brand. The documentary premiered at a barf bag museum, where we literally put barf bags from around the world on a pedestal. Niche enthusiasts and media were invited to the first of its kind exhibit in New York City to admire showpieces like a space barf bag from NASA that defied gravity on a levitating display, and hundreds of other collectibles from dozens of countries. The museum was meticulously curated with bags on loan from the world’s top collectors – staged by gallery designers to create a visually stunning experience. But it didn’t stop there—to ensure that barf bags have a place in a barfless future, a newly designed series of not-barf-bags was created. These inventive, repurposed bags showed new uses for barf bags – from coloring pages, notebooks, flower vases to popcorn bags. The new series of bags were sold along with Dramamine product on an all-new ecommerce platform. With every execution, the iconic barf bag was celebrated and reminded the world of how effective Dramamine is. Results: Outpacing Category Growth Dramamine’s core business goal was to grow faster than the overall motion-sickness category by capturing new-to-brand consumers. The campaign led to Dramamine achieving a 7.4% sales growth, which outpaced the category by 53%. The campaign wasn’t just riding the tide of category growth but actively pulling consumers away from lower-cost generics and flashier new entrants. This growth was also reflected in Amazon sales. Post-documentary, Dramamine’s Amazon sales grew by 24%, a 20% lift compared to the same period in the previous year. This significant growth demonstrates that the documentary both generated engagement and converted viewers into buyers. Views and Social Buzz The documentary became a conversation starter – and garnered recognition within the film festival circuit, including the Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance’s BrandStorytelling, and the Ciclope festival. Within a month, “The Last Barf Bag” amassed over 300,000 views on YouTube, far exceeding expectations for an over-the-counter healthcare product. On social media, organic brand mentions spiked by 53% year-over-year, with consumers sharing and discussing the quirky concept across platforms. The documentary’s viral nature extended its reach well beyond its initial launch and helped embed Dramamine in cultural discourse. Over 2 Billion impressions were made. Organic Brand Interest and Engagement Within three months of the documentary’s launch, Google searches for Dramamine increased by 21%3, and new-to-brand site visitors spiked by 137%4. These figures reflect the campaign’s success in reaching a new audience that was not previously engaging with the brand—demonstrating that the activation was not only entertaining but highly effective in drawing consumers’ attention to Dramamine. The Last Barf Bag drove new-to-brand consumers, outperformed the category, and led to significant business growth in both interest and sales, ultimately re-establishing Dramamine’s dominance in the motion-sickness category.