Ready for some creative work from the Miami Ad School? Of course you are, so listen to one of the few anti-smoking campaigns ever created that might actually work.
A few students reasoned that peer pressure is in many cases (if not most) the reason that people take up the nasty habit of smoking. And, with many becoming desensitized to the prevalent gory anti-tobacco advertising, why not use that same peer pressure to encourage people to stop smoking? Enter the “I Bet You Can Quit” mobile app, which targets smokers’ friends instead of the smoker. The only catch (and where this app potentially fails) is that the subject needs a enough of smoke-free friends who are bothered by the smoker’s habit that they’re willing to gamble actual money on his or her ability to quit. The problem with this is that smokers tend to hang out with other smokers, so this hypothetical group of concerned peers might not exist in most cases.
However, “I Bet You Can Quit” is the first original anti-smoking campaign we’ve seen in a good while. If the students behind this are lucky enough, they might achieve the same fame as the Miami Ad School students behind the “Bump a Smoke” mobile app received in June. But this time, we don’t foresee Philip Morris taking issue.