No excuses: New campaign targets reasons for not quitting
The Cancer Institute NSW has launched its first advertising campaign out of The Campaign Palace since the agency was appointed late last year.
The campaign comes almost a decade since the launch of the National Tobacco Campaign which unveiled the ‘Every cigarette is doing you damage tagline”. The Campaign Palace’s executive creative director and chairman Paul Fishlock was writer and co-creative director on that ground-breaking campaign.
The new TVC is based on a highly successful Californian campaign which contrasts smokers excuses for not quitting with the health consequences of continuing to smoke.
The theme is “Quitting is hard, not quitting is harder” and shows people talking about their particular excuse for not giving up smoking followed by a cancer victim and surgeon echoing them with a feature of the consequences of cancer.
One man says he can’t go more than a few hours with a cigarette and is followed by a cancer patient who says he can’t go more than a few feet without his oxygen tank. Another woman says she tried to quit but put on four kilos followed by a cancer patient who says she had lost 14 kilos.
The campaign is spearheading a strategy by the Cancer Institute aimed at reducing smoking rates by at least 1% a year.
The Campaign Palace, which also works with QUIT Victoria out of its Melbourne agency, was appointed to the business in a competitive pitch late last year. It is the first agency appointment for the Cancer Institute since it was established in July 2003.
The Cancer Institute NSW’s chief cancer officer Professor Jim Bishop said Fishlock’s experience in the area of anti-smoking advertising was “formidable”.
“As the creative director of our work Paul has a unique ability to grasp the complexities of smokers’ attitudes and behaviour and marry it with the consequences of smoking.
