Check how this campaign compelled many Singaporeans to quit smoking

It claims of reversing five-year upward trend in smoking.

Health Promotion Board (HPB)’s ‘I Quit’ campaign by Ogilvy & Mather Singapore bills to be a much lauded and awarded piece of work that turned the conventional anti-smoking campaigns on every audience head.

In an interview with Ogilvy & Mather Singapore representative, she shared that through their ‘I Quit” campaign, not only that the new model of communications create never before efficiencies for the Health Promotion Board, reducing their dependence on campaigning, it managed to do what was once thought impossible.

“Over the last three years, it reversed a five year upward trend in smoking in Singapore, setting a new benchmark in how social change campaigns should be designed,” she added.

The campaign takes a pro-quitting approach rather than the traditional anti-smoking. It got smokers to give up cigarettes by encouraging and inspiring them to quit rather than trying to scare them into quitting by talking about the dire and grotesque consequences of smoking like typical anti-smoking campaigns do.

“In an era when consumer trust in organisations and governments is rapidly eroding, this campaign leveraged the one thing that people still believe in- the community- to create a pro-quitting culture. By doing so, we were able to make a radical move away from the 'advertiser to audience’, ‘one-off, one message’ approach and create a new participatory model of communications through peer support, an always-on social media platform and community generated content,” she said.

Credits:

Agency: Ogilvy & Mather Singapore
Account servicing- Shirley Tay, Chanderni Devi, HuiMin Ng
Planning- Sonal Narain, Tania Chan
Creative-Troy Lim, Jon Loke

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