Ontario Ministry Of Health And Long-term Care: SOCIAL SMOKING CAMPAIGN

Credits & Description:

Type of entry: Titanium and Integrated
Advertiser: MINISTRY OF HEALTH AND LONG-TERM CARE
Product/Service: ANTI-SOCIAL SMOKING
Agency: BBDO TORONTO, CANADA
Senior Vice President/Executive Creative Director: Peter Ignazi (BBDO Toronto)
Senior Vice President/Executive Creative Director: Carlos Moreno (BBDO Toronto)
Vice president/Associate Creative Direction: Nancy Crimi-Lamanna/Deborah Prenger/Dave Stevenson (BBDO Toronto/Proximity Canada)
Writer: Nancy Crimi-Lamanna/Tony Lee/Jonathan Weiss/Lins Ricon/Richard Weiser (BBDO Toronto/Proximity Canada)
Art Direction: Deborah Prenger/Graham Ameron/Stuart Thursby/Eric Cicero (BBDO Toronto/Proximity Canada)
Agency Producer: Dena Thompson/Jason Dick/Joanne Sincich (BBDO Toronto/Proximity Canada)
Production Company: (Soft Citizen)
Production Co. Executive: Link York (Soft Citizen)
Production Co. Producer: Kelly King (Soft Citizen)
Director: (The Perlorian Brothers)
Cinematographer: Bobby Shore ()
Editor: Griff Henderson/Brian Williams (Posterboy Edit)
Music/Sound: (Silent Joe)
Vice President/Group Account Director: Peter Hickey (BBDO Toronto)
Account Director: Kerri MacAulay/Paul Forrest (BBDO Toronto)
Account Executive: Josh Adler (Proximity Canada)
Interface Developer: Robert Blayney (Proximity Canada)
Senior Flash Developer: Angela Wong (Proximity Canada)
Brand Activation Strategist: Paul Hanlan (Proximity Canada)
Community Moderator: Stephanie Fusco (Proximity Canada)
Describe the campaign/entry
The government of Ontario decided they could save tons of lives and health care money if they could get social smokers to quit before they got addicted.
Makes sense as over 60% of social smokers eventually become smokers.
Strangely, no anti-smoking campaign had ever tackled this key intervention moment. There was just one problem.
How do you convince someone to stop doing something they won't admit they're even doing?
After all, they weren't smoking. They were "social" smoking.
Our campaign took away their social safe place by using humorous analogies to show how ridiculous using the word "social" to justify smoking really was.

Campaign Success
Within 2 weeks of launching the campaign we earned 117 million impressions,
2 million YouTube views and over 141,000 engagements.
More importantly,
we got people talking, increasing the conversation around social smoking
by more than 8,600%.
The campaign's fresh new approach brought it to the attention of the
Canadian and International press. The work was recognized in Ad Week, Ad Age's
Best Creative of the Day, Ads of the World, Mashable, Time Magazine, and The Huffington
Post.
CNN even ran a story calling it "Maybe the best PSA ever."
Other interested parties, like Canada's Centre for Addiction and Mental
Health, joined the discussion around social smoking, volunteering their time and expertise as contributors to our social discussion. In short, the campaign built an incredible amount of momentum in a very short period of time.

Launched & Execution
This campaign was social by nature - All communications drove to our Facebook page at quitthedenial.com. Paid media that drove to Facebook included cinema ads, online advertising, on campus posters and ads in restaurants and bars.
Given our youthful target, leveraging social media was a natural choice for this campaign. We needed a forum where they could interact with one another as peers are such an important influencer for this audience.
In addition to our social platform we planned to intersect social smokers where and when they were most likely to light up.
Casual or "social smokers" typically choose to smoke on weekends when they're out with their friends. By having a presence at weekend haunts like movies and bars, we hoped to intersect these casual smokers in the moment and have them think twice about smoking.