Anti-Smoking Campaign Gets To The Heart Of The Matter
The British Heart Foundation has announced that its latest anti-smoking advertising campaign has generated the most impressive response of any health awareness initiative it has ever run.
The campaign, created by Euro RSCG London, aimed to shock people into quitting by depicting in graphic detail the side-effects of smoking. It featured cigarettes dripping with fat and the clogged artery of a thirty year-old smoker (pictured).
The British Heart Foundation claims the television and outdoor campaign, which came to an end last Saturday, helped boost traffic to its special anti-smoking microsite by almost 80% in just over a month.
Research also revealed that the amount of time spent on the site averaged nine minutes and 19 seconds, which is double the average time spent on most UK websites. According to Hitwise, this made www.bhf.org.uk the second most visited website in the health care sector last month, behind www.breastcancer.org.
Commenting on the campaign, the Government’s Health Minister, Melanie Johnson, said: “These powerful adverts have been a visual wake up call to everyone about the dangers of smoking and it is encouraging to see they are motivating so many people to quit.”
A formal evaluation of the campaign’s success is currently underway, but the initial feedback suggests the initiative has been highly impactful, with nearly 100,000 people phoning the British Heart Foundation’s special smoking hotline.
The use of shock tactics is often employed by advertisers to get across a particularly powerful message. However, this approach can often prove troublesome and the ASA recently banned a controversial campaign for Barnardo’s after almost five hundred people complained that it was offensive, shocking and unduly distressing (see ASA Bans Barnardo’s Child Poverty Campaign).
British Heart Foundation: 01763 242414 www.bhf.org.uk
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