The FDA wanted to target millennials with their "The Real Cost" campaign, aiming to motivate teens and young adults not to smoke in an ironic and light-hearted way, conveying the message that any reason is a good reason not to smoke.
We know our fans respond well to comedy; to engage our audience and convey "The Real Cost" campaign message, we leveraged our relationships with talent and created a custom campaign of faux PSA spots featuring Viacom comedic talent to air on all platforms across Comedy Central.
In a series of custom co-branded spots, we showcased our comics as they reveal their silly, yet legitimate reasons why they don't smoke. The series consisted of one long-form :45 spot and a :30 highlighting all selected talent, along with short, impactful, :09 one-liner pieces as told by each of the comedians. These spots were pushed out on multiple platforms & screens across Comedy Central. We also created a custom playlist for the FDA on ComedyCentral.com, featuring the custom PSA with other comedy clips to enhance the partnership within the digital space. These clips tied into the "reasons" theme by giving fans "reasons to stay in and watch comedy." The spot was tweeted out by Comedy Central & will be tweeted out via FDA's handle in the coming weeks.
The spot featured comedians Nate Bargatze, Tone Bell, Nore Davis, Casey Jost & Veronica Osorio, as they share their personal reasons they don't smoke. We shot each comic individually in front a white cyc backdrop, in the style of a traditional PSA. Keeping the look clean and simple allowed for the hilarious dialogue to be the focal point, allowing FDA's message to resonate in a truly authentic & impactful way.
We structured the spots so that there was a reveal, with the payoff at the end. Opening cold on our first comic's line starting with "Because…" From there, we intercut a line from each comic. The spot ends with a title card that reads REASONS NOT TO SMOKE / #reasonsnottosmoke, inviting viewers to share their reasons not to smoke and continue the conversation online.
We found the viewers responded very well to the use of humor to motivate teens and young adults to not smoke. The :30 spot premiered in the October 28th episode of South Park & ran throughout the week in Comedy Central ROS Programming, garnering 1.02MM impressions for P18-34. The short-form one-liner spots were also tweeted out by Comedy Central's Stand Up handle, reaching over 63k followers.
