How Dramamine's 'Last Barf Bag' Scored Multiple Grands at Clio Health

Dual histories spew laughter—and a timely message

FCB collected multiple Clio Health Awards last night on behalf of Dramamine, including three Grand prizes.

“The Last Barf Bag” features collectors of the items in a short documentary, and the purveyor of motion-sickness meds positioning itself as a leader in its category.

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It turns out that 1949 was a very good year for vomit—barf bags debuted, but so did Dramamine. For three-quarters of a century, the brand was unaware of this shared history, making for an even more poignant and hilarious campaign.  

The film garnered over 650 million impressions. Such momentum fueled a 23 percent rise in brand engagement and a 26 percent improvement in sales.

“The work for Dramamine proves that with bold ideas and brave clients, brands can create genuine cultural impact—even when the conversation is about barf,” says Andres Ordonez, FCB’s global chief creative officer. “The real magic happens when those ideas collide with culture.”

Muse spoke to Ordonez about the making of the campaign.

MUSE: What was your creative spark?

Andres Ordonez: Dramamine is a household name in the U.S. But the motion sickness category was starting to change in a way that challenged the brand’s leadership. To reassert itself and jolt it back to relevancy, we needed a sticky idea with an interesting angle to get people talking. As we explored how to show the brand’s superiority, we landed on a compelling way to tell our story: using its original competitor, the barf bag. 

How did you find a community of barf bag lovers?

It started as many ideas do, stalking the internet for niche Reddit threads and unheard-of stories. One collector caught our eye; then we found another and another. We followed the breadcrumbs on Facebook groups, Wikipedia pages, personal websites and landed on four collectors turned characters. They shared with us their passion and pastime. The Dramamine team was incredibly supportive of our curiosity and creativity. Their trust in the process and the product was invaluable.

Can you take us through the journey of creating this campaign?

Over six months, we concepted, shot and launched. Working with a team of four directors to film across the country, we captured the magic of our collectors, and they became the stars of our campaign. After falling in love with barf bags ourselves, we decided to build a museum exhibit to showcase the beauty of bags from yesteryear. And we developed an e-commerce platform that sold repurposed bags to prove that what was once irrelevant can have a new life. Every element of the idea revealed a new detail that shaped our story. It brought new meaning to the adage of building the plane as you fly it. (Just don’t barf in it!)

What was most surprising?

The joint 75th anniversary of both the barf bag and Dramamine. It was almost too good to be true. It gave us the perfect backdrop to tell our story. The time was now to bring the brand to the forefront of culture and entertainment.

Can you speak to how this effort will live on? 

The beauty of this idea is more than a memory. It has served as an inspiration for the brand to pave a new path for Dramamine to play a role in culture. Since the launch of the activation, we have seen an increase in mentions of Dramamine in the media as the solution for nausea and motion sickness.