To get under the radar of hardened smokers who block out health advice and opinion. They know that smoking is bad for them but, as with any addiction, they blind themselves to the effects on their own health and the health of others. As a result they are pretty immune to the standard ‘smoking is bad for you’ advertising, which is deemed to be ‘preachy’. We needed to find a fresh approach which would surprise them before they had time to block out the message.

We were unable to break down results by medium, but the overall campaign was very successful. Spontaneous awareness of general poisons in cigarette smoke rose by 178%. While awareness within just smokers rose by 160%. Awareness of Benzene in smoke rose by 480%. Awareness of Arsenic rose by 300% and Formaldehyde by 350%. With 58% of smokers taking action to give up. The website received 62,467 unique visitors in two weeks with 124,682 page views. Average time spent on the website was 4.54 minutes with an average of 2 pages viewed per visit representing 3% of the total traffic for CRUK’s News and Resources website.

Smokers know about the tar and nicotine in cigarettes. However, very few know that the smoke from a cigarette is made up of over 4,000 chemicals, 69 of which cause cancer. Our solution was to create a dispassionate information campaign across all media, which would educate smokers and non-smokers about the cocktail of poisons in smoke. By demonizing the smoke – rather than the smoker – the target audience would be receptive to the messaging rather than antagonized by it. Additionally, non-smokers would be furnished with the evidence to maintain and reinforce their dislike of cigarette smoke.