NHS

Challenge

When looking to have a significant impact on smoking quit rates, success only ignites when you can convince heavy smokers who are heavily dependent on tobacco to quit. But smoking campaigns just don’t seem to cut it with this audience – they’ll do anything to rationalise their addiction, even in the face of the most gruesome images or most irrefutable data.

Provocative Thought

We needed to take these smokers to places they don’t want to go – what if we could prick the bubble of denial that surrounds them, stop them clinging on to flimsy “truths” from their own lives, projecting stats on to others and convincing themselves “it will always be someone else”?

Solution

A deliberately heart-wrenching, impossible to ignore campaign, that confronts them with the stark reality of their own mortality. We hero the devastating effect their smoking will have on them and the people they love. This, combined with new stats relating to dying too soon, and a deadly serious tone of voice, leaves them in no doubt that smoking will see them miss out on the things they value most in life. The TV campaign is supported by OOH, social, radio, PR and ambient.