BBDO Dublin’s HSE QUIT campaign, I Will Survive, won four awards at the 2017 Kinsale Sharks Awards – Silver and Bronze in the Best International Film category, and Silver and Bronze in the Irish categories. It also won Bronze in Film at Epica.
And it did more than impress the all-star juries. It impressed everyday Irish people.
The aim of the campaign that was released in Ireland in April 2017 was to encourage the Irish still smoking to do so now and keep trying until they succeeded. It celebrated the fact that for the first time ever there were more quitters than smokers in Ireland.
The ad uses the 1978 Gloria Gaynor anthem, I Will Survive, for its power, mirroring the feelings and stages quitters go through on their journey to being free of cigarettes and encouraging people to quit with the feeling of being free from an unhealthy relationship with cigarettes.
Martina Blake, HSE lead for Tobacco Free Ireland Programme commented at the time, “Not only is this campaign getting international advertising industry recognition and awards, health care organisations from Belgium, USA and Australia, to mention but a few, have been in touch with regard to using the campaign in their jurisdictions, such is the impact it has had.”
Apparently, the ad was also noticed in the US. The New York State Department of Health’s Bureau of Tobacco Control noticed it. BBDO NY has just begun to run it there.
HSE is proving to be an astute advertiser. The campaign before Quit also made its mark.
This campaign was a content series about a man, Gerry Collins, was dying of cancer from smoking. The series was spearheaded by two testimonial ads. Collins died in 2014 but not before he had been the catalyst for a substantial drop in smoking in Ireland. The campaign was also adopted or adapted by two similar health organisations in the UK.
Credits for Quit:
Agency: BBDO Dublin
Creative Director: Des Kavanagh
Copywriter: Dillon Elliott
Art Director: Clayton Homer
Account Management: Dave McGloughlin & Vivienne Lawlor
Production Company: 2AM London
Director: Steve Cope
Producers: Chris Cable & Andrew Counihan
