Arresting / intriguing creative avoided the ‘language of antismoking’ our target had learnt. Drawn in by the imagery they were then ambushed by the health message at the end when it was too late to avoid it. Visual executions showed that lethal objects remained lethal even if they have nice names, just like ‘light’ cigarettes: a shark is still deadly even if it’s called ‘Susie’. Similarly the radio activity focused on the misleading colours of ‘lights’ packaging.

Stealth’ made a small budget work hard: awareness amongst lights smokers exceeded 80% and research showed 25% of smokers who saw the ads cut down/gave up as a result, making this one of the DOH’s most successful campaigns. Even better, it means fewer people will die that agonising death from smoking.