The cumulative harm to health from every drink of alcohol is highlighted in a sobering new campaign live this week, developed by 303 MullenLowe for the Mental Health Commission and Cancer Council WA.
Part of the ongoing Alcohol. Think Again public education initiative, the new ‘What’s Your Poison?’ campaign aims to raise awareness about how alcohol causes harm to health, regardless of how often or in what circumstances it’s consumed. It will run across TV, radio, OOH, digital, and social throughout WA from today for the next 12 months.
303 MullenLowe senior business director Holly Creasey said it is the first time a direct correlation between alcohol and poison has been made in an Alcohol. Think Again campaign, in an effort to drive home the message about harm to the target audience aged 25+.
“Despite ongoing public health messaging about alcohol’s harms, many people still dismiss the personal risks associated with their alcohol use,” she said. “To help counter this, we needed a campaign that increases awareness about how alcohol causes harm to health. With a tagline that urges people ‘reduce your drinking to reduce the damage’, we hope this campaign will make it easier for everyone to understand the harm alcohol can cause.”
303 MullenLowe copywriter Zosia Kilpatrick said the creative took the common term ‘what’s your poison’ as a central focus because it was such a familiar term known and used across different age groups. “What many people don’t understand is why we use that phrase, and how it came to mean ‘what drink will you have?’. The fact is, it might be used because alcohol actually is a poison. Using this common phrase throughout the creative is a simple and effective way to explore the science behind what actually happens inside the body when you drink alcohol.”
303 MullenLowe has developed a number of campaigns for Alcohol. Think Again to help raise awareness about the harms from alcohol. This includes ‘We all need to say no’, which calls for parents to join two out of three already saying ‘no’ to giving under 18s alcohol (launched in July 2022); and the ‘One Drink’ campaign which highlights the dangers of drinking alcohol during pregnancy (launched in 2021) among others.
Acting Mental Health Commissioner, Lindsay Hale, said: “Alcohol contributes to significant harms in our community. While we have seen success over recent years in raising awareness of the health risks of alcohol, almost half of West Australian adults are not aware alcohol causes cancer. The new campaign shows that when a person drinks alcohol, the body converts alcohol to acetaldehyde, a toxic chemical and known carcinogen. This causes damage to cells, which can lead to cancer. Continuing to raise awareness about the health risks of alcohol remains an important step to reduce preventable death and disease in the Western Australian community.”
