DrinkWise and Clemenger BBDO Melbourne launched 'The Internet Remembers' in December 2018, using augmented-reality statues in Melbourne nightlife spots to warn
DrinkWise Turns Drunk Selfies Into Stone Monuments Across Melbourne
DrinkWise's 'The Internet Remembers' is an integrated public-interest campaign created by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne and launched across Australia in December 2018, using augmented-reality statues of embarrassing drunken incidents positioned in Melbourne nightlife precincts to remind young adults that content posted online endures long after the night is over.
The campaign targets young Australian drinkers at precisely the moment they are most susceptible to poor decision-making — the weeks surrounding Christmas parties and end-of-year celebrations. Five stone plinths, each depicting a humiliating scenario associated with excessive drinking, were installed at high-traffic nightlife locations across Melbourne. Passersby could point a smartphone at the statues to trigger augmented-reality activations that brought the scenes to life, making the consequences of a bad night viscerally concrete rather than abstractly cautionary. As reported by Branding in Asia, the physical installations were supported by a partnership with Vice, street posters, social content, public relations, and influencer activity — an integrated architecture designed to reach young Australians across multiple touchpoints simultaneously.
The strategic objective is straightforward: shift the framing of excessive drinking from a private embarrassment to a permanent, searchable, shareable public record. DrinkWise, the Australian alcohol industry's self-regulatory and education body, commissioned the campaign to encourage moderation rather than abstinence — a distinction that shapes every creative and media decision made by the Clemenger BBDO Melbourne team. In the United States and elsewhere, public-health campaigns of this type often lean on fear; in Australia, DrinkWise and its agency chose wit, with Branding in Asia characterising the work as 'clever and morbidly funny.' The Clapboard Score for 'The Internet Remembers' is 82 out of 100, reflecting strong strategic coherence, cultural specificity, and creative originality.
DrinkWise built 'The Internet Remembers' on a single, durable consumer truth: the internet does not forget. The campaign arrives at a moment when young Australians are native to platforms where content persists, is algorithmically surfaced years after posting, and is accessible to employers, family members, and future partners without the original poster's knowledge or consent. Rather than warning against drinking in the abstract, Clemenger BBDO Melbourne anchored the message to a digital-age anxiety that the target audience already carries, making the campaign feel less like a lecture and more like a knowing observation from a peer.
Simon Strahan, CEO of DrinkWise, articulated the core insight directly: 'The way we use social media nowadays means that moments we wish we could forget can often live on digitally, and we hope that using that insight as a relevant and timely reminder will help young adults take a more moderate approach to alcohol consumption,' as reported by directnewideas.com. This framing positions moderation not as a health imperative but as a form of self-interest and social intelligence — the same strategic register that DrinkWise's earlier 'How to Drink Properly' platform, also produced by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, had established from its February 2014 launch, according to campaignbrief.com.
In Australia, the competitive environment for alcohol harm-reduction messaging is complicated by the scale of commercial alcohol marketing. According to Cdn Adf Org Au, the Australian alcohol industry spent more than A$100 million annually on commercial alcohol advertising in 2018. Against that volume of pro-consumption messaging, harm-reduction campaigns face a structural attention deficit. Organisations such as the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, which has historically advocated for stricter statutory controls, represent a contrasting institutional voice on alcohol policy in Australia, while the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking documents industry-funded initiatives globally. 'The Internet Remembers' differentiates DrinkWise within this landscape by adopting the creative register of commercial advertising — wit, spectacle, earned media — rather than the didactic register of traditional public-health communication.
The creative execution of 'The Internet Remembers' rests on a single, arrestingly literal idea: if digital content memorialises embarrassing behaviour permanently, then the campaign should make that permanence physically monumental. Ant Phillips and Rich Williams, Creative Directors at Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, translated the strategic insight into five stone plinths — the classical form of the civic monument — each depicting a scenario that any young Australian drinker would recognise and dread: public urination, projectile vomiting, and similarly specific humiliations that typically accompany excessive drinking on a big night out.
Phillips and Williams described the creative territory with characteristic directness, as reported by directnewideas.com: 'Whether it's a public display of urination or projectile vomiting whilst your boss holds your hair back, the internet remembers everything.' The augmented-reality layer, activated via smartphone, transforms what might otherwise be static street furniture into an interactive experience that rewards curiosity and generates the kind of shareable content the campaign is itself warning against — a formally elegant tension that gives the work its self-aware quality. Production credits for the full technical execution of the AR component are not comprehensively documented in publicly available sources, though Clemenger BBDO Melbourne is identified as the agency of record across reporting by directnewideas.com, brandinginasia.com, and adsoftheworld.com.
The media architecture is constructed to amplify the physical installation rather than replace it. The Vice partnership distributes content to the precise demographic — young, urban, digitally fluent Australians — that the statues are designed to reach in person. Street posters extend the visual language of the monuments into the surrounding environment, while influencer activity and social content create a parallel digital record of the campaign, enacting the very dynamic — public posts that persist — that 'The Internet Remembers' is built around. Fraser Nelson and Lauren Moran are among the Clemenger BBDO Melbourne team members associated with the campaign's development, as documented by caples.org and adsoftheworld.com, and Steve Pratt is credited in connection with the project's production, per caples.org.
Verified performance data for 'The Internet Remembers' is publicly available and indicates a meaningful shift in stated attitudes among the audiences the campaign reached. According to Drinkwise Org Au, eighty percent of the exposed audience agreed that the campaign encouraged them to consider the consequences of excessive drinking. Thirty-six percent of the exposed audience stated they intended to moderate their drinking on a specific occasion as a result of exposure to the campaign, per drinkwise.org.au. These are robust self-reported figures for a public-interest campaign operating in a media environment saturated with competing commercial alcohol messaging.
The structural effectiveness of 'The Internet Remembers' also merits independent analysis. The campaign's choice of an integrated format — physical installation, augmented reality, earned media, influencer amplification, and a media-brand partnership with Vice — means that its reach extends well beyond the number of people who encountered the statues directly in Melbourne's nightlife precincts. The augmented-reality mechanic generates shareable video at the point of interaction, transforming each engaged passerby into a distribution node for the campaign's core message. The Christmas timing concentrates exposure precisely when the risk of excessive drinking is statistically elevated among the target demographic in Australia. The Caples Awards recognised the campaign, as noted by caples.org, which further validates the work's standing within the international advertising and direct-marketing community. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 82 out of 100 reflects its strategic cohesion, creative originality, and the measurable attitudinal impact documented by DrinkWise.
'The Internet Remembers' is a DrinkWise public-interest campaign created by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne and launched in Australia in December 2018. It placed augmented-reality statues depicting embarrassing drunken scenarios at Melbourne nightlife locations to remind young Australians that online content recording bad behaviour persists indefinitely, encouraging moderation during the Christmas party season.
Ant Phillips and Rich Williams served as Creative Directors at Clemenger BBDO Melbourne on 'The Internet Remembers.' The wider Clemenger BBDO Melbourne team included Lauren Moran, Fraser Nelson, and Steve Pratt, as documented by caples.org and adsoftheworld.com. Phillips and Williams described the campaign's brief as capturing specific, recognisable moments of drunken embarrassment.
DrinkWise reported that eighty percent of the exposed audience agreed the campaign encouraged them to consider the consequences of excessive drinking, according to drinkwise.org.au. Thirty-six percent stated an intention to moderate their drinking on a specific occasion. These figures reflect meaningful attitudinal movement for a public-interest campaign in a commercially competitive Australian media environment.
Clemenger BBDO Melbourne installed five stone plinths at Melbourne nightlife locations, each depicting an embarrassing drunken incident. Smartphone users could point their cameras at the statues to trigger augmented-reality activations that animated the scenes, as reported by Branding in Asia. The mechanic turned passive observation into an interactive, shareable experience that reinforced the campaign's central message about digital permanence.
DrinkWise's 'The Internet Remembers' directly continues the creative platform established by 'How to Drink Properly,' launched by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne in February 2014, according to campaignbrief.com. Both campaigns target young Australian drinkers, use humour rather than overt moralising, and frame moderation as socially intelligent behaviour — a consistent strategic voice across more than four years of DrinkWise creative work.
DrinkWise timed the December 2018 launch of 'The Internet Remembers' to coincide with Australia's Christmas party season, the period when excessive drinking among young adults is most prevalent. The campaign's placement in Melbourne nightlife precincts ensured direct exposure at the point of risk, while the Vice partnership and influencer activity extended reach across digital channels simultaneously.
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