1. Specify (alternative) courses of action

• Identify the 4ps being used in the case and thoroughly explain the marketing mix used in the case (4ps, 7ps)

Case Study

The campaign was part of an ongoing activity that had used a range of messages and message frames, as shown by the illustrations overleaf.

The strategy chosen reflected the constant and multifaceted challenge to reduce the number of UK snickers and drew on the combined forces of the government, the British I lean Foundation, and all other related charities working constantly towards minimizing the number of people who start and minimizing the number of people who successfully stop.

The British Heart Foundation’s part in this was the now infamous ‘fatty cigarette’ campaign which dramatically bought to life the arterial damage caused by smoking. This case documents how the efforts of multiple advertisers produced a powerful combined effect. helping to reduce the number of smokers by over a million. Iconic imagery of the fat dripping from the cigarette created a powerful visceral response of revulsion in the smoker, and successfully pushed many of its targets over the tipping point to quit.

In order to put together the strategic battle plan, we needed an understanding of the
the mindset of our core target, what they were expecting, and how they could be ‘caught’ unawares.

Research had identified the following characteristics:

• Expecting to be lectured and made to feel like socially unacceptable outcasts.
• Expect huge scary statistics, most of which they know already and can repeat back to you word for word
• Expecting to be made to feel like pariahs, when in fact the cigarette is the real enemy.
• An amazing capacity to defer the effects of smoking into the future on the basis that they’ll stop ‘tomorrow’ or convince themselves that the worst-case scenario won’t happen to them. The strategy was to take a feel-good, popular song about love and longing, and cruelly twist it to refer to heart damage. However, this realization would hit people only after they had
  begun humming along.

The campaign did not portray someone on their deathbed, but instead, just regular people, seemingly healthy (beautiful even), in regular everyday smoking scenarios that every smoker can relate to. It is the cigarette that is vilified, as the smoker is seen to be unaware of the clot that moves under their skin, moving ever nearer to the heart and a heart attack.

The creative focused on communicating the ever-present danger of breakaway blood clots that can cause a heart attack any time, anywhere. The statistic ‘A blood clot kills another smoker every 35 minutes was a perfect fit to purpose. The statistic wasn’t the biggest heartstopping fact when researched, but was the one that best elicited a reaction of sufficient alarm, without being so dramatic as to permanently remove all hope. By making the cigarette the enemy, not the smoker, and by adopting a tone of a helpful ally rather than disdainful judges, the BHF aimed to give people hope.