Shame is underused as a creative raw material. The brown lawn that signals you're saving water. The wardrobing habit that becomes a circular fashion statement. The tampon that becomes a political act. These campaigns didn't resolve the shame — they transformed it. And the brand that enables that transformation earns something the brief rarely asks for: permission to exist in a part of the audience's life that advertising usually can't reach
Here are four creative tactics from the Change Behaviour Engine that turn what people hide into what they share.
- Make the Hidden Thing a Trophy
- Turn the Flaw Into the Badge
- Use the System Against Itself
- Give Permission Through Humour
1. Make the Hidden Thing a Trophy
Find the behaviour people are quietly ashamed of — and award it.
Gotland's Ugliest Lawn — Region Gotland, Differ Agency, 2022
The brief: reduce water consumption during a drought on the Swedish island of Gotland, where residents were watering their lawns out of social habit — not practical need. The shame was the brown, patchy lawn visible to neighbours. Differ turned it into a competition. The ugliest lawn — the most water-conserving, the most ecologically virtuous — won prizes. Water use dropped 5%. The campaign generated $788 million in earned reach by doing the one thing no conservation campaign had managed: making the right behaviour look better than the wrong one. The following year, Differ scaled the concept globally, with celebrity endorsement turning brown lawns into a worldwide climate flex.
