Nicabate urges people to quit smoking on Australia Day
GlaxoSmithKline’s Nicabate brand is launching a quit smoking campaign during Australia Day featuring some of the nation’s favourite animals.
The Starting Lines campaign, created by Whybin\TBWA\ Tequila and planning handled by Bellamyhayden, features a “smoking” kangaroo and emu and has been designed to get smokers to think twice about their habit.
Vanessa Burrow, GSK Nicabate marketing manager, said: “The campaign is designed to empathise with the importance of the decision a smoker takes to quit whilst adding some lightness and also reminding them that not giving up on giving up is key to success.
“People often choose milestones in the calendar to instigate change, such as New Year, or a milestone birthday so why not Australia Day? After all it’s an important day in the Australian calendar and equally important day for smokers – it’s the end of the summer party season and this landmark is often a trigger for many smokers to kick start their journey.”
Ooooh. I don’t know. Giving up when everybody is out on the booze is not going to be easy. I am not a smoker but I have seen how that breed struggle when they have a drink.
It’s in gsk’s interests to get people to smoke – then they have more product to sell. These ads actually make smoking look cool / ironic.
xxx – you make an interesting point…
@xxx – Agreed.
Ditto, ditto. It’s such a pity the demoralising advertisement did not occur during the 60’s and 70’s. Instead the messages were cool (as above). It is not humourous to be in the process of quitting. Adults are aware. Doctors, nurses and patients returning from theatre smoked in the hospitals in those days. Been there, done that. I have quit. But the ongoing ads give me the poops. They did nothing for me, only upset me and made me “want” to smoke.
Do you lift your stories straight of other blogs?
Hi “Plagiarism”,
The story above was based on a press release sent out under embargo by one of the agencies involved. We weren’t the only people they sent it to, and we respected the embargo, as we always do.
But if my “other blogs” you mean that Campaign Brief published the story first, you are correct that they did appear to breach the embargo. This was then followed by at least one other trade title.
At that point the agency advised us that they had lifted the embargo because the story was in the public domain, at which point we published it too. Hope that clear it up.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
I’ve been hearing the on-air ads and I have found them to have some great cut through. As a smoker, it is always something you think about, and there are some key times where you think about it more. The start of a new year is one of them. Why not I say. And in terms of the above ads – animals smoking IS fun!