The Last Smoke | SD Department of Health

Insights
Media
Strategy
Web
Video Production
Out-of-Home Production
Brand

The Challenge

Messaging for a broader audience of smokers — both potential and existing — to truly reach them in a way that they haven’t already heard dozens of times before from PSAs, friends and family, proves a tough task. After all, what haven’t they heard before about the health implications, the financial and physical costs, etc.? So we struck out to build out messaging that would be surprising, eye-catching and, most importantly, effective.

The Solution

“The Last Smoke” positions cigarettes as a fad — merely something that humanity thought was cool for a brief moment in time. By employing stark visuals (enter the Museum of Extinction) and comparing cigarettes and other tobacco vessels up against some of our most antiquated artifacts from the past, it takes the wind out of the sails of the products. Taking away their cool factor, tobacco products have nothing else going for them.

The Work

Phase one of our multi-year campaign established the messaging strategy tapping into the idea of ensuring your later years are ones of the utmost quality. Additional phases included location shoots to demonstrate scenarios in which smoke breaks take you away from life’s key formative moments. This included the production of a short film following a lifelong smoker who perpetually misses out when he habitually uses tobacco, a cut of which was aired during the Super Bowl.

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