Smoking stinks! No kidding. Smoking causes heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer, mouth cancers and a lot of other bad things. You’d think if you just told people that smoking will kill you or disfigure you, that would do it.
No. You can’t scare most people into quitting. Most smokers know it’s not good for you.
In the 90s, our clients at the Michigan Department of Community Health committed significant time and money to stopping what was then the number one health risk for people in Michigan. Research pointed us in productive directions. People were afraid they couldn’t quit. Women didn’t like it if it made them smell or look bad. People were motivated when their smoking was going to hurt family. We created messages that resonated with both genders, audiences of a variety of ages and diverse cultural groups.
Radio, TV, print, posters, outdoor messages made the phone to the Quitline—a hotline to help smokers get what they needed to successfully quit—ring beyond expectations. And the work, we are equally proud to say, kicked butt at award shows nationally and internationally.
Which of these anti-smoking ads gets you fired up?
To see the rest of the 30 Best of Brogan, visit our original post in this series: Celebrating 30 years of creative advertising.
