Roses advertising awards see through the illusion

Tobacco Related Deaths (TRD) picked up an award for cinema commercial of the year at the coveted Roses Advertising Awards 2010, and is the first Roses Award for Vivid and TRD.

TRD, commissioned by Our Life and Smokefree North West is one of 3 films designed to target 14-18 year olds- the audience that the tobacco industry recruit as new smokers to replace customers that have quit and died through their habit.

The film is part of the Smoke & Mirrors Youth Advocacy Campaign. Young people were involved in the very core of production, commencing in a series of roadshows to stimulate ideas. A film workshop led by Karl Sanderson, Vivid & Mike Cockayne and Integral Productions, resulted in around 100 young people ‘seeing through the illusion’ and voting for their favourite ideas at a campaign weekend in October.

Karl Sanderson, Creative Director Vivid said: “The client adopted a unique approach to this campaign. Rather than regurgitating the obvious health risks smoking causes, they asked Vivid to work with the region’s 14-18 year olds to research the truths behind the tobacco industry exposing the negative practices. What’s great about this approach is we were able to involve the films audience from the start and make sure we were delivering something that would change their and future generations behaviours”
Mo Iqbal from Runshaw College joined Vivid, Integral Productions and the film stars Matt Littler and Darren Jeffries, alongside Carley Stenson and Natasha Hamilton on location to shoot TRD, which highlights negative tobacco industry practices including marketing and the media in a spoof style detective drama.
Commenting on the film and award win Dr Janet Atherton, chair of Smokefree North West said: “Smoking is a childhood addiction and 80 percent of smokers start before they are 19. Clearly this project has created an excellent platform for young people to express their views. We congratulate Vivid and the young people in this achievement.”

The commercial, produced and directed in partnership with Integral Productions ran in Cinemas across the North West between December 2009 and January 2010. In foyer research, evidences the effectiveness of the campaign with 40% of smokers who had seen the commercial stating that the advertising had made them ‘more likely’ to quit.

Media was purchased by PHD North.