I started sneaking cigarettes from my parents when I was 14. By the time I was 16 and driving, I kept a pack in my glove box. At 17, I was smoking a pack a day. Through art college, it was what we did – smoke and drink coffee.

By the time I got in to advertising I believed there were two great ideas in every pack of cigarettes. I quit for the first time when I got married. At age 28, I switched jobs and became the youngest Executive Creative Director of an international advertising agency in Los Angeles. While at Hakuhodo I started smoking again out of self defense. I quit again when I moved to Silicon Valley to become the ECD of Bozell. I started again when I left there for JWT in San Jose. I quit once more when I moved to Phoenix to become the ECD at EB Lane where one of our accounts was the Arizona Department of Health Services who oversaw the State’s anti-smoking campaign.

The interesting part of this is that there were no smokers or former smokers working on this portion of the account. I was the only person who had had actually experience with the product. Drawing on that experience, I created the idea of “going cold turkey”. It was how I had quit – albeit four times. It was how others I knew had quit. And I was sick and tired of hearing and seeing all the messages from the other campaigns regarding what smoking did to people. At that time in my life, the basic fact was, “That happens to someone else, and by the way, no one I know.”

To get a wider view of what was happening in this category, we brought in pizza and the national reel of anti-smoking commercials so that my creative group could see what other agencies had done or were doing. The more horrid the visuals, the more the group laughed. It was like watching video games or bad horror movies. No one was affected by the message as it was probably originally designed to do. Smoking was still cool and anti-smoking TV commercials were obviously stupid, unbelievably gross and simply falling on deaf ears.

Pizza & Anti-Smoking Commercials Make People Laugh

From this meeting a new dialog opened with the Marketing Director for ADHS with the question being asked, “How would we reach smokers if they’re laughing at how the anti-smoking message is told?” The State still needed to reach out to smokers, to offer encouragement and let smokers know ADHS offers a variety of services to help them quit. Could it be done in a way that wouldn’t seem heavy handed? Since the influence of friends and family is a key part of successfully quitting smoking, our advertising approach would have to appeal to the non-smokers as well, and encourage them to engage in a positive dialogue with smokers. At that time, all message were negative and every smoker was being ostracized for smoking. My thoughts for a positive approach ran along the lines of B.F. Skinner — if years of positive reinforcement could make smoking cool, maybe positive reinforcement could be used to help people quit.

Our Creative Approach

Despite years of health warnings, many Arizonans still smoke. They know they should quit but they don’t want to be lectured to: they’ve heard too many messages, too many scare tactics, and tune out the majority of anti-tobacco messages. Smokers are only receptive when they are in the “quit zone”: that state of mind where they’ve decided it’s time to quit. Only then will they pay attention to messages designed to persuade them to quit, or offer them help. And even then they don’t want to be browbeaten.

Research from around the country has shown that the majority of smokers who successfully quit do it by going “cold turkey.” But even then, there will be obstacles: cravings, setbacks, fear of weight gain, and more. The goal was to empower smokers to believe that they COULD successfully break the nicotine habit, and COULD do it cold turkey. Our approach was to provide them with hints and tips that could help them be successful.

And who better to deliver these tips, than the “Cold Turkey” himself. This turkey is no dummy: he provides the information in a friendly, humorous manner so that smokers can envision themselves in these situations. And the obvious visual gag of a 6’4″ giant turkey made the commercials entertaining for everyone, making it easier for friends and family to discuss the commercials with smokers, and help them make the decision to quit without lecturing.

Click the image below to view our TV spots.

Bottom Line Results

• Awareness soared: At the end of 6 months, awareness was over 53%, significantly above goal.
• Generated warm fuzzy feelings. People who saw the ads were significantly more likely to feel positively about the State.
• The turkey grabbed attention: 57% of respondents thought that these ads were more interesting than other ads about quitting smoking.
• Viewers flew to the web: Over 40,000 unique visitors went to the gocoldturkey website, and almost 20% of them came back more than once. And they didn’t just flit around: the average length of visits was over 8 minutes.
• Smokers DID reach out for help: In the six months of the media campaign, the number of people who reached out via internet or telephone for help from the State services was up 13% in the 2 counties where Cold Turkey ran, compared to a decrease of 1% in the rest of the state.