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2025 One Show - Out of Home

The Last Barf Bag

Agency FCB / Chicago + Rakish / Los Angeles + 456 Studios / Chicago

Client Dramamine

Category

Experiential & Installations / Brand Installations

Annual ID

OS25_OH063M

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 interacted, admired and paid tribute to barf bags from around the world at a live event. 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. We promoted the premiere through OOH and digital OOH, just as you would promote any film launch. Highly targeted ooh and mobile ads drove people to the event, where everyone from niche enthusiasts, media, influencers and passersby watched the film and engaged with the barf bags.

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, to notebooks, to flower vases to popcorn bags. The new series of bags were sold along with Dramamine product on an all-new ecommerce platform.

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 storytelling. 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 our celebrated barf bag museum, where we literally put barf bags 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 and 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, to notebooks, to 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, reminding 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 product6. 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.

2025 Awards

Total Points: 3

Merit

Credits

Agency

FCB / Chicago
360PR / Boston
The Shipyard / Columbus

Agency In-House Production Company

456 Studios / Chicago

Production Company

Rakish / Los Angeles
Extra Packaging
SPCFuel

Music / Sound Production Company

JSM Music / New York

Art Director

Mike Otero

Associate Creative Director

Gustavo Dallegrave

Content Creator

Chris Colvin

Director

Sunny Sixteen

Executive Creative Director

Bruno Mazzotti
Desmond LaVelle
Monique Kaplan

Illustrator

Doug Lira
Miagui

Sound Designer

Marco Morales

Global Creative Partner

Danilo Boer

VP, Strategic Planning Director

Yisha Zhang

Account Director

Andrea Kleinman

Account Director, Experiential

Adam Russell

Account Executive

Eleanor Carignan

Analytics Supervisor

Lydia Sum

Assistant Account Executive

Hailey Rosenberg

EVP, Executive Director Agency Production

Matt Blitz

EVP, Group Strategic Planning Director

Landi Day

EVP, Head of Copy

John Fiebke

Line Producer

Mario D'Amici

President

Jennifer Neumann

Product Innovation Manager

Eniola Eboda

Production Business Manager

Cathi Fremer

Senior Project Manager

Sydney Watson

Senior Talent Manager

Gayle Heldmann

Sr. Brand Manager

Erica Nesbitt

Sr. Marketing Director

Frank Paukowits

Studio Technician

Rickey Rogers

SVP, Global Executive Creative Producer

John Bleeden

SVP, Management Director

Taylor Walker

SVP, Management Director, Experiential

Jeannine Aniol

SVP, Strategic Analytics Director

Jordan Snyder

SVP, Strategic Planning Director

Tricia Russo

Vice President of Marketing

Randi Jachino

VP, Business Affairs Director

Jeff Cowie

VP, Director of Music

Stump Mahoney

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