BBDO Bangkok Inks Anti-Smoking Message from Lungs

Approximately 142 people die from smoking in Thailand every day and research carried out in the region also shows that 90 per cent of smokers - at least once - have considered quitting but most of them never commit because the harmful effects of the habit aren't clear enough.

Thai Health Promotion Foundation wanted to tackle this insight and launch an anti-smoking campaign to change smokers' perceptions by raising awareness to give them more understanding about the dangers and has done so by bringing the proof from inside the body to the outside via tar from donated lungs.

The Message from the Lungs campaign from BBDO Bangkok introduces the world’s first ink made from smokers’ donated lungs. By co-operating with Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, the agency successfully extracted the black substance from smokers’ donated lungs and made it into ink.

The substance was then bottled and distributed to the public, especially smokers, to demonstrate the scary effects of smoking and what it can do to the lungs and other organs, encouraging quitting.

The work became a huge talking point across Thailand and the topic generated more than 70m THB in earned media. The messages have also been shared on social networks by more than 100,000 people.

Most importantly, a large number of smokers were convinced by the messages to quit with the Thai Health Promotion Foundation’s quit-smoking programme participants increasing by 500 per cent compared with the same time last year.