It’s hard to get someone to see things from a different perspective. The psychology involved in the campaign featured in this blog is critical, yet simple. Some might say, wonderfully nuanced!
How do you stop people from smoking? You don't, but you can encourage them to act on their intentions to stop, and to maybe plant the seed of said intention…
The majority of smokers know the health implications of smoking, even teen vapers assume their habit is equally unhealthy, yet they still partake. I won't delve into the data in this blog, needless to say, there's rather a lot. Instead I'll touch on the basics. If you disagree with anything written here, that's okay, my research and thoughts stem from ASH.org.uk and GOV.uk data. This is an informal blog for SEO, so don't quote me!
We had a video campaign come through the door - “vape prevention” in young people, as well as “stop smoking” for all those that smoke… These are two hot topics and two topics that are very closely linked. Swap to Stop is a campaign designed to get smokers swapping their cigarettes for vapes. Why? Because it’s said that vaping is healthier, it can also be used to lower nicotine levels over time, thus helping an addict stop, or at least do less damage to their body if they intend to continue.
The challenge is… We can't encourage smokers to swap to a vape whilst also telling young people not to vape. Well, actually, I guess we can, and I guess we have! Through honest and transparent story telling it’s not that difficult. There are no natural contradictions in the message and therefore by telling the stories of those involved, even for those that swapped to stop, it’s made evident that vaping is not something to get away with. We don’t glorify vaping, if a young person were to watch this campaign, they shouldn’t go away thinking that it’s okay to vape.
The main campaign focuses on smokers, predominantly because the only volunteers we could corral in the timeframe were former smokers, some transitioned to vape, before aiming to stop that too. Smokers use the vape to quit smoking, with the intent to quit the vape. Young people jump straight to the vape. Arguably this is positive as young people skip the cigarette, however, they're still burdened with the evident nicotine addiction that comes along with sucking on a vape... As well as the otherwise unknown health implications… This isn't good. But what can you do? How can you encourage young people (including kids) to put down, or even better, not pick up a vape...?
Treat them like adults. Also, treat the adults like adults too.
That's the premise of the video campaign we produced. People don't want to be patronised, there are so many health related adverts and videos out there which try to scare people away from the habit. People don't care. In our video campaign we decided to simply interview a series of ex-smokers, vapers (aka, nicotine addicts), including a mother of a current teen vaper, a mother who used to be a smoker and now vapes to stop the habit, whereas the teenager vapes for the status.
The idea was to allow real people to tell their stories in a simple and easily digestible format. We don’t delve into the details and more importantly, we don’t tell the audience what to do.
The audience can learn from those on screen, relating more with the stories and interviewees that they resonate with most.
We set out to create role models. We achieved this.
No forced message, just honest thoughts and stories which will hopefully inspire both smokers and young vapers to think about their own actions and relate them to the stories of the interviewees. The audience get’s a glimpse at either their future selves, if they’re getting into their addiction, or someone they could strive to be, if they’re already on the path to stop but need that extra bit of help. This campaign is designed to be expanded and will hopefully continue to inspire audiences with simple, true and quality story telling.
For those wondering more about the technicalities of the campaign, it’s made up of a series of interviews with former nicotine addicts. Each interview is under 2 minutes, some much shorter. The interviews were formatted in both landscape and portrait allowing for distribution on multiple social channels. We opted for a contemporary, yet timeless, aesthetic, including fashionable cutaways to keep a bit of pace and to allow the audience to see more details of those they’re watching - character building! We filmed in a large public hall to subliminally target the local audience. We used a “school photo” style backdrop to further tie into the physiological nuance, building both trust and nostalgia in the audience. However, the background was dark and tar like, a subtle hint on the effects of smoking… We didn’t want things to look bright and happy, rather professionally eye-catching and subdued. From an audio perspective we kept things very simple, we didn’t want to detract from the impact of what was being said by an overwhelming score.
The end result was what we set out to achieve at the start.
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