News

Smokers calculate how many more years they would live in M&C Saatchi Sydney campaign

M&C Saatchi Sydney has created a campaign for UK anti-smoking charity QUIT which aims to tell smokers how much longer they would live if they immediately gave up smoking.

The drive, described by the agency as “brutally simple”, was launched yesterday to coincide with the UK citizens putting back their clocks one hour to signal the end of daylight savings. Cigarettes replaced clock hands on the quit.org.uk website with the words: ‘Tonight you get one hour back. Quit and you’ll get years back.’

The campaign went live with an extensive print rollout in Britain’s mainstream newspapers, along with out of home, online and social components, while a giant digital billboard in Piccadilly Circus ran from Saturday evening until the early hours of Sunday.

On the website, smokers can type their age, when they started smoking and numbers of cigarettes they smioke to calculate an estimate of how many years they would get back if they quit.

According to the calculator, the average 25-year-old male smoker in Britain who smokes 12 cigarettes a day and started smoking at 16 would get back five years by stopping immediately.

QUIT chief executive Glyn McIntosh said: “It was a genius idea from the guys at M&C Saatchi Sydney to link quitting with the end of Daylight Savings. It’s an event that effects everyone living in the UK, obviously including every smoker, so it’s enabled us to get enormous awareness and traction.

“It’s great that people can go to the website, punch in their details and get an estimated figure – the time of their life – they would get back if they were to quit smoking today. It’s such a compelling, tactile way to show people the ultimate benefit of not smoking.”

M&C Saatchi Sydney creative director Ant Melder said: “The clocks going back is always seen as something of a negative, after all it signals the start of winter. But the reality is that everyone gets an hour back, an extra hour to sleep in, to play with your kids, to do whatever you want.

“It was a brutally simple thought to link that idea to the time smokers would get back to do all those things if they quit their deadly habit.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Get the latest media and marketing industry news (and views) direct to your inbox.

Sign up to the free Mumbrella newsletter now.

 

SUBSCRIBE

Sign up to our free daily update to get the latest in media and marketing.