Where: France

The challenge:

Three fifths of French smokers said they wanted to quit the habit – but a dive into the numbers shows only 29% ever tried. There are a number of reasons why people have trouble quitting smoking, including the lack of urgency, strength of habit, perception of smoking as a social activity, fear of being alone and fear of failure. 

It takes a huge effort to change these attitudes and behaviours and to create a collective challenge for quitters that gives them the best chance of successfully ceasing their habit. 

We worked with the French national healthcare agency Santé Publique France to create a social movement campaign to reduce the gap between intention to quit and a final push to break free of smoking.  

The execution:

Such an ambitious project meant we drew on the expertise of several of our agencies to create an effective campaign. The strategy was to create a two-step communication programme. First, we launched the Moi(s) Sans Tabac (‘Me. One Month. Without Tobacco) challenge to invite smokers and their supporters among friends and relations to sign up to the movement.  

Then we had to help coach and support French people over the hurdle of 30 days of Moi(s) Sans Tabac. The data shows that if a smoker can go 30 days without tobacco, they will be five times more likely to quit for good. 

We used TV, outdoor, digital and social media for the promotional phase to highlight how to subscribe to the programme and the coaching tools. The campaign was amplified through a national roadshow featuring inspirational and helpful advisors and activities. We also struck a brand content partnership with the national channel France Télévisions and its daily show ‘Plus Belle la Vie’ - two well-known characters in the show embraced the challenge in a placement partnership. 

For the second phase we assembled e-kits for quitters to download to give them support through the month. Radio spots, display ads, social media (owned and paid) and influencers, who shared their own effort to quit with their followers, all offered words of encouragement. To make the most of the TV show partnership 22 special web episodes were created for the ‘Plus Belle la Vie’ website. 

The results:

By devising an easy-to-understand challenge with a wide array of supportive assets, we have helped thousands of people in their efforts to quit smoking. 

During the launch month, awareness jumped 79% and the activity generated 1.3 million online visitors to tabac-info-service.fr. – more than four times the visitor number during the average month. There were 180,000 subscriptions to the Moi(s) Sans Tabac challenge.  

127,000 supporter e-kits were downloaded and there were 887,000 trials to quit (276% more than a standard month).