Wyoming has one of the highest smoking rates in the country. The Wyoming Department of Health hired us to change that. We began by analyzing the Centers for Disease Control campaigns developed based on best practices for tobacco cessation. Those campaigns featured graphic images of people suffering due to their tobacco addiction but when we dug deeper, we found only 0.5% of their audience actually called the QuitLine because of the campaign.
Focus group participants explained that the commercials were so disturbing most of them switched channels or walked away. Then we uncovered an important fact, nearly half of smokers have tried to quit in the past year.
We realized smokers didn’t need to be motivated. They needed a better way to quit and more help. So, we did something unheard of in the category. We created a funny and arresting campaign focused on promoting the free nicotine patches, gum and counseling offered and we backed it all up with the fact the QuitLine doubles your chances of successfully quitting.
Smokers responded. Calls to the QuitLine surged upwards 181.1%—by far the highest percentage increase in the country. The three-month campaign flight accounted for 46% of the total volume of calls to the QuitLine for the entire year.
