Anti-smoking Campaign: "SMOKEFREE GENERATION" Promo / PR Ad by Agency Republic

Category: Best Use of Online Advertising
Advertiser: DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH COI
Product/Service: ANTI-SMOKING CAMPAIGN
Agency: AGENCY REPUBLIC
Date of First Appearance: Sep 19 2009 12:00AM
Entrant Company: AGENCY REPUBLIC, London, UNITED KINGDOM
Entry URL: http://www.biginteractiveideas.com/COI_DH/smokefree_generation/
Business Director: Gavin Marshall (Agency Republic)
Senior Planner: Sarah Monring (Agency Republic)
Associate Creative Director: Phil Wilce (Agency Republic)
Senior Creative: Charlie Johnson (Agency Republic)
Art Director: Jim Stump (Agency Republic)
Project Manager: Mat Agbaba (Agency Republic)
Film Producer: Tom McLoughlin (Agency Republic)
Film Editor: Tim Gardiner (Agency Republic)
Designer: Ben Heath (Agency Republic)
Creative Technologist: Gabor Szalatnyai (Agency Republic)
Account Director: Kirsten Nielsen (i-level)
Account Manager: Hannah Craik (i-level)
Media placement: Rich Media Campaign/Targeting - MSN Hotmail, Platform A Ad Network - 19/09/2009

Results and Effectiveness
With a recently introduced government target of halving smoking rates among routine and manual workers by 2020, this digital work marks a step change in advertising communications for the Department of Health. 80% expansion rate massively outweighed average of 24% 281,000 hours spent by people watching the video in our ads 94% of viewers watch the films all the way through The most successful Smokefree digital campaign ever Multi-award winner

Creative Execution

We created a series of online films which capture the emotion of a child’s plea to a parent to quit smoking. In order to launch the video we had to prompt the viewer to click to play with audio. Here was a further opportunity to innovate. The creative served varied depending on two criteria. Firstly, its environment: we used contextually relevant copy that referenced the placement – eg. news, sport, gossip, messaging placements. Secondly it depended upon the degree of viewer interaction with the ads they had been exposed to up to that point. For example, had someone been exposed to the advertising with a call to action such as ‘I have a message for you, click to listen’ and not interacted, the next time they received an ad with a stronger call to action ‘You didn’t listen to me, I’m really worried about you – click to listen’.

Insights, Strategy & the Idea
The aim of this campaign was to reduce smoking prevalence among a very specific target audience - “routine and manual” working parents (broadly C2DEs). The target audience are notoriously difficult to reach online. Our challenge was to find them and deliver a powerful message with maximum impact. Our objective was to disrupt the online routine of the audience in order to deliver a hard-hitting message and increase motivation to quit smoking. They’re an audience who have become increasingly hardened to shock messages about the effects of smoking. But research showed ‘family’ is the most powerful motivator for R&Ms which led to a campaign proposition of ‘Your smoking affects your loved ones more than you think’. Consequently, our creative strategy was to highlight the concerns of real children affected by smoking and allow them to talk directly to parents. For 48 hours we surrounded our audience with messages from real children.