2012 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

NAQA, a non profit organization, wanted to increase the awareness about the harmful effects of second-hand smoke caused by smokers who kept on smoking in Public areas where smoking is prohibited.

Success of the Campaign

the campaign was very successful where 15,000 smokers joined the therapy sessions at NAQA clinic after which they quit smoking within a period of 2 months. This also led to a 65% increase in visitors to the clinic compared to last year.The reaction was nothing less of utter amazement, people were discussing it on Blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. It was even discussed on the major TV Stations and Programs (MBC, Saudi TV 1 & Saudi TV 2); with a consistent message mentioning how creative and innovative the idea was.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

Because traditional ads proved not to be effective, we needed to come up with an unconventional idea using an unconventional medium. We needed to demonstrate to smokers what second hand smokers feel. So we came up with the “Coughing Poster”. First, smoke from cigarettes enters through a fan that funnels it to a smoke detector. This smoke detector gives the signal to a programmed amplifier that transforms the beeping alarm sound into a coughing sound. All this has been fit into a poster with an image of a coughing person on it. We placed the poster in places where smokers gather and did this exercise in the 3 major cities of KSA (Riyadh, Jeddah & Dammam)