Louise Delage is just like every other popular Instagrammer out there. She’s a young 25-year-old Parisian who shares all the fun moments to be had; from a wild day at the beach to a moody pic of her pet cat Jean-Claude. But as we’ve come to expect, not all is as it seems on Instagram.
Each photo digs a little deeper into the life of Louise Delage, dropping a subtle hint of alcohol addiction with a glass frequently seen in hand. In reality, the fictional account was created by Paris agency BETC for the Addict Aide campaign Like My Addiction.
In this story, Louise Delage is a young woman who shares every facet of her life and amasses a sizable following from it. However, no one can see the telltale signs that she is addicted to an alcoholic lifestyle. “We thought an interesting way of showing it would be to create a person people would meet every day but whom we’d never suspect of being an addict,” BETC president and creative director Stéphane Xiberras Paris tells Adweek.
The twist was revealed in a video released two months and 150 Instagram posts later targeting not only Louise Delage’s 39,000 hoodwinked followers, but everyone at large. It resulted in Addict Aide receiving fives times more traffic than usual. Xiberras hopes the campaign will raise awareness of those struggling to come to terms with addiction:
“The more people stage their ideal life on social media, the more that serves to hide a not-so-ideal reality.”
The Instagram account posted a new photo every morning, noon, and night to maximise reach and drive home the frequency of her drinking habits. While some may argue that the Louise Delage character has yet to suffer any extreme backlash from alcoholic postings; it is also true that Instagram is a fictional construct and people only highlight the “best” aspects on social media.
The campaign provides a sobering glimpse at how easy it is for the naked eye to overlook the signs despite studies having demonstrated that Instagram can help diagnose depression.
DigitalRev 