Smoking cigarettes is bad. Young people know this because they have been told again, again, and again. And then one more time for good measure.
But it's still not enough. Each year, thousands of young people will pick up their first cigarette and shorten their lifespans by ten years on average. It's our job to deliver the facts and truth about smoking in a way that makes them urgent and relevant to young adults.
Our focus is smoking prevention. We target young adults, ages 18-24, who are open to the possibility of trying or experimenting with tobacco.
In the United States, 78% of 18-24 year-olds are on Snapchat. Known for its disappearing messages and risque content, it was the perfect platform to hit them with our Dick-centric video series.
The math was simple. Young people like sex. You can't have sex if your penis doesn't work. Cigarettes can make your penis stop working.
By connecting the hard (or not hard) truth about smoking to young people's romantic desire, we'd cut through the bullshit to shift their perceptions around tobacco.
Most people know the basic dangers of smoking cigarettes, like lung cancer and heart disease. But a lesser known, and possibly scarier fact for young men, is that they can get erectile dysfunction from smoking. So we set out with a video series spinning classic children's tales to warn of erectile dysfunction caused by smoking.
In "Twinkle Twinkle Little Dick" an omnipresent voice sings a ballad-style parody of a children's classic, and we learn how smoking can cause erectile dysfunction. The song crescendos as we follow his dysfunctional journey, ending on a begging question, "Why'd you have to get so sick?" The answer, of course, is cigarettes.
In the video "Hickory Dickory Dock" another classic children's song is adapted to encourage young audiences to not let their big plans fall flat because smoking can cause erectile dysfunction in men as young as 20.
Using animation, the film series dramatizes the ill effects of cigarettes on your arteries and penis in a way that didn't feel like an academic lesson in biology. And with the playful perversion of universally known and loved children's songs, we could deliver this hard-to-stand (pun intended) information in a fun, if not slightly cheeky, way.
The video series launched around the most amorous of holidays: Valentine's Day, with the hero film "Twinkle Twinkle Little Dick" launching on social media February 13th, and our Snapchat Promoted Story on the 18th. We created highly visible digital moments that intercepted young adults while love was in the air – and on their phones. The campaign continued for a month with the next installment "Hickory Dickory Dock" as a purely digital and social campaign, staying true to young adults' media behavior.
The "Twinkle Twinkle Little Dick" Snapchat promoted placement drove almost 200k visits to thetruth.com in one day – 50K more than our previous week-long campaign. This traffic converted to 6,700 sign ups on the thetruth.com in the same 24 hour time frame which paces well above the single day average. This campaign drove 81% of all site visits and 89% of all signups during its flight which was executed on a very limited budget.
Finally, this campaign exceeded our media efficiency stats. The creative performed better than truth's campaign average for cost per swipe up (2x more efficient), cost per view (3x), cost per completed view (5x).
