The Campaign

The Thai Health Promotion Foundation (THPF) is a non-profit organization that has been continuously holding above-the-line campaigns encouraging people to quit smoking. However, the number of people quitting smoking has not diminished as much as they want. Now, the THPF wants a fresh and new anti-smoking campaign that directly interacts with the smokers and instantly provokes them to realize the hazard of smoking in order to noticeably reduce the number of smokers in the country. In the Thai cultural context, adults naturally take action to educate children whenever they misbehave. However, when adults themselves repeat the children’s action, they overlook that misbehavior. Therefore, our strategy is to use smoking children to demonstrate adult’s misbehaving action. To do so, the creative solution is specifically designed to take place at the smoking areas outside busy buildings. While people are smoking, we get child actors, holding a cigarette to walk up to adults and ask them for a light. In this incident, adults will commonly refuse and warn them not to smoke, the child actors would ask them why they themselves are smoking and hand a ‘quit-smoking’ brochure to them. As a result, apart from 40% call inquiries increased, when the VDO was uploaded in YouTube, number of views reached over 600,000 views within 3 days and over 5,000,000 views within 10 days. It also rapidly generated high earned PR without spending any paid media. This does not include only Thailand’s top TV programs but also from international journalists from all over the world including Al Jazeera, Reuter, New York Daily News, Arab News, Chicago Tribune, Fox News, Deccan Chronicle from India, Philstar from Philippines.

The Brief

The Thai Health Promotion Foundation regularly takes a role of supporter for those who want to quit smoking by offering a service ‘call 1600 hotline to quit smoking’ for many years. However, the most important challenge is how to drive the target, which is all Thai smokers to realize that the most effective way of quit smoking is by ‘reminding yourself.’ The insight that shaped the idea is very common to all smoking adults based on our experiment in which we found that 100% of smokers after received the leaflet, suddenly stopped and thought of the provocative message delivered by the smoking kids.

Results

As a result, apart from 40% call inquiries increased, when the VDO was uploaded in YouTube, number of views reached over 600,000 views within 3 days and over 5,000,000 views within 10 days. It also rapidly generated high earned PR without spending any paid media. This does not include only Thailand’s top TV programs but also from international journalists from all over the world including Al Jazeera, Reuter, New York Daily News, Arab News, Chicago Tribune, Fox News, Deccan Chronicle from India, Philstar from Philippines.

Execution

The creative solution is specifically designed to take place at the smoking areas outside busy buildings in Bangkok and suburban. While people are smoking, we get child actors, holding a cigarette to walk up to adults and ask them for a light. In this incident, as expected, all adults commonly refused and lectured them about the hazard of smoking, while they are still holding cigarettes. Therefore, this is based on our original plan where we hoped to record the real lecturing messages and use them as a provocative message to get themselves realize that reminding themselves is the most effective way to quit smoking.

The Situation

The THPF has been continuously holding above-the-line campaigns encouraging people to quit smoking. However, the number of people quitting smoking has not diminished as much as they want. This campaign is a fresh and new anti-smoking campaign that uses children as a communication tool for the first time in Thailand. The contrast imagery of an innocent kid and the hazard of smoking becomes a touchable message that appeal a number of influencers like journalists around the world to create the buzz and impression further globally.

The Strategy

In the Thai cultural context, adults naturally take action to educate children whenever they misbehave. So, the strategy is to use smoking children to demonstrate adult’s misbehaving action. To do so, the creative solution is specifically designed to take place at the smoking areas outside busy buildings. While people are smoking, we get child actors, holding a cigarette to walk up to adults and ask them for a light. All incidents were filmed and used this candid visual to be exposed in YouTube aiming to create viral effects.