Campaign: Tobacco Control
Client: Department of Health
Agencies: Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, Euro RSCG
Principal authors: Clare Hutchinson, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO; Jane
Dorsett, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO; Annabelle Watson, Abbott Mead Vickers
BBDO; Ann Marie Kilpatrick, Bartle Bogle Hegarty; Frank Reitgassl,
Bartle Bogle Hegarty; Kate Waters, Euro RSCG
With contributions from: PHD Media, PAA
Media used: TV, print, outdoor, PR, radio, direct marketing, cinema,
ambient, press
CASE SUMMARY
Since the Tobacco Control Campaign launched in 2000, more than 10,000 lives have been saved from the effects of smoking. During this time, anti-smoking advertising has quadrupled in effectiveness to become the most powerful trigger to smokers kicking the habit.
Its influence has been amplified by a new kind of integration: that of advertisers. By creating a coalition of brands (British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and the NHS), the Government has waged war on tobacco in a way that is compelling but not oppressive. New reasons were found to encourage people to give up. The damage inflicted by each cigarette, an assault of the tobacco industry and the effects of smoking on loved ones. The number of smokers in the UK has since dropped by more than one million, beating the Department of Health's 2005 target three years early.
The judges' view
This paper looks at the combined effect of anti-smoking activity from a partnership of cancer-related companies and their respective agencies.
It makes a powerful case for multiple messages and crucially shows the merit in different "voices" delivering them.
Each campaign proposed a different reason to give up, and did so in a way that did not victimise smokers. As a result, 1.1 million fewer people are smoking and 50 per cent more people are calling the NHS Quit Smoking helpline.
Beyond these behavioural effects, the paper looks at how efficient the campaign has been in achieving its ends. To have paid for itself, the campaign needs to have accounted for 7,661 of the 1.1 million people who have given up.
Perhaps most powerfully, judges told anecdotes of people they knew personally who had given up as a result of these campaigns.
