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DoH Smokefree

Rather than a public awareness campaign that set out to reach millions of eyeballs, MEC and MCBD set out to create millions of emotional moments of self reflection.

The challenge

Despite a steady decline over the last few decades, smoking is still the biggest cause of preventable death today. The hardest to influence group are skilled and non skilled blue collar workers. Not only is smoking a more normalised behaviour in these communities but they have become hardened to shocking health messages and it's an easy problem to put off for another day. Department of Health needed a solution to force them to think about their smoking in the here and now.

Our insight

In a unique collaboration with creative agency MCBD our big idea was to surprise our audience by referencing the very specific context in which they were watching, listening, or clicking on their favourite media. We needed to make them aware of the psychological harm their smoking was causing their children: a powerful motivator to quit. We set out to jolt mums and dads into paying attention by showing real kids, not actors, who were talking to their parents: 'Hey mum, I know you're watching Corrie ... I just want to give you this message...'

Our solution

On radio we ran bespoke unscripted creative on Absolute and talkSPORT and in press we referenced the titles Heat and the Sun. We targeted our audience in other moments of working day down time with beer mats, sandwich bags and supermarket six sheets, again referencing the environment. We even created a number of 6 sheets using real kids from the TV ads highlighting the site of the ad such as the bus stop where their Mum catches the bus, creating valuable local PR. Online, we followed our audience over 48 hour periods through constant re targeting of websites visited, saturating their digital space and further providing no chance to ignore the message. Bespoke ads referencing the sites they ran on also appeared as pre rolls on VOD channels and YouTube.

The results

The highest levels of motivation to quit since 2006 with 54% of our audience agreeing 'These ads made me think I should stop putting it off and give up smoking now'.

Incredibly, 55% said the campaign is likely to make them stop smoking (the highest ever for a Tobacco Control campaign), rising from 38% for the previous campaign.

This translated into behaviour, with a record number of calls made to the NHS Smoking Helpline, with a TV cost per response less than a third of the previous best performing campaign.