Smoke free futures - engaging young people via digital media
Our behaviour change specialists were chosen by national smoke-free charity The Deborah Hutton Campaign to deliver social marketing insight, design and brand identity, digital media and PR to launch an innovative film-making competition called Cut Films.
Cut Films challenges young people to get behind the cameras to write, shoot and edit their own films about the dangers of smoking and share them with their peers via social media sites. Using creative communications, the long-term goal is to drive positive behaviour change by creating as 'snowball' effect, which has a more sustainable impact on young people's smoking behaviours than a traditional awareness-raising campaign.
Our design team created a cohesive umbrella brand for the charity, as well as a complementary youth-friendly brand identity for Cut Films. We also built an interactive website with technical capabilities to upload, view, share and vote on films through a number of social media sites to help spread their peer-led films online.
Our digital media specialists created unique personal accounts, which gave young people the chance to reflect on their attitudes towards smoking and experience making their film.
In the first national year of the competition, 118 films were entered and viewed nearly 30,000 times on YouTube, while the top ten 2011 films alone received more than 1,000 votes on the Cut Films website. The 2011 evaluation research in two specific local competitions concluded that ‘a clear positive shift in attitude can be seen in young people’s attitudes towards not smoking amongst those who took part in the competition’.
