Whether you love it or hate it, Facebook’s new Timeline feature is here to stay. Rather than jump on the bandwagon condemning the new feature, an Israeli ad agency used it to send a powerful anti-drug message.

McCann Digital created Adam Barak’s fictional “double-profile” to showcase the life of an addict on one side, alongside the life of a drug-free individual over the month spanning 4 December 2011 to 4 January 2012. In the beginning their lives don’t seem too different, but things soon start to deteriorate for the addict.

At a glance the campaign may seem relatively simplistic, but getting all the posts to flow in a chronological pattern was a task in itself. Daniel Barak, a copywriter for the agency and the guy who posed for the images explained it like this,

In the beginning it was a realistic double profile, filled with statuses, Youtube links (music), check-ins (for example, the drug user checks-in at a hospital), featured albums, life events and basically every feature facebook offers. I worked on it for about 3-4 days straight, just posting and trying to place every post in its right place. But after I had finished something changed and all my work went to the crapper. Just because one status had moved to the wrong side of the timeline, it messed up everything with it.

So after building the timeline 5 or 6 times with the check-ins and other features, I decided that I prefer having a working and understandable idea rather than something much more impressive that could mess up and no one would understand it.

Not to mention the fact that I’ve grown my hair and beard for the past 2 months just for that.

The campaign’s brilliant use of Facebook’s new features carries a strong message that people can easily relate to and also opens up a whole new avenue of possibilities for advertising and marketing agencies.

View his full profile here.

[Source: Facebook, Adverblog]