Case study

Quitting smoking

Case study

Quitting smoking

Smoking prevalence in England has been continually falling and at 13.9% (ONS 2020), rates now stand at an all-time low, one of the lowest in Europe. Marketing has made a significant contribution to this decline through campaigns and interventions delivered at national and local levels, and our work with different clients to inform and guide their activity has directly contributed to creating change.

We’ve worked extensively with PHE on exploratory pieces with different smoking cohorts, younger and older, to bottom out the opportunities and levers for change and triggering quit attempts. We’ve also looked at pilot approaches for niche audiences such as pregnant women and provided insight to inform the development of a very wide range of national and more targeted educational and quitting smoking campaigns.

We’ve worked directly with creative agencies looking to deliver campaigns to encourage quitting; understanding audience responses to new directions for engagement and messaging.

For Liverpool City Council (LCC), we’ve delivered recommendations for persuading hyper-local communities to take first steps to change how they smoke. Our other work for LCC has looked at specific health and influencer audiences to work out new social and health system interventions for pregnant women and young people. We’ve also explored the development of vaping behaviours and the vaping market in the context of smoking.

However, while great strides have been taken, smoking remains a major public health issue contributing to health inequalities across England. Around 6 million people still smoke and rates remain high within certain groups. There’s still a pull to start smoking and some who’ve been smoking for a long time face very high barriers to change.

It’s a complex area, not least because of addiction. Our recent work with smokers of all ages and stages has been focused on the current social and emotional context of smoking and what it’ll take to create, encourage and support change.

Client

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