Most Australians think they have healthy lungs. But how would they know if they’ve never had them checked? That’s why Lung Foundation Australia, felt it needed to do something. The idea behind the campaign? To show everyday Australians quite literally, “Checking in with their lungs”.

The campaign directed Australians to a website, where they could complete the Lung Health Checklist, which advised them to see their doctor if something was wrong. Bus commuters were able to complete the checklist, using interactive digital bus shelters. Newspapers, magazine, out-door cinema, music festival sponsorship, PR activity and other targeted social media activity broadened the campaign.

The campaign led to an extra 700,000 Australians considering their lung health as important. 43,500 lung health check lists were completed. That’s 9.6 times the campaign benchmark. Of those who completed the checklist, 60% were at significant risk of lung disease.

Our big idea was to dramatise the simplicity of taking action on lung health.

Our way to increase engagement with lung health was to show ordinary Australians just how easy it is to think seriously about their lung health by creating the slightly absurd action of checking their lungs by tucking their head down their top. We termed this action ‘checking in with your lungs’, which became our campaign sign-off and call-to-action. The gentle humour gained attention without being flippant. While distinct and intriguing, the idea was simple enough to work effectively as a static image, while the TVC and multiple executions allowed us to show a range of characters to establish just how wide-reaching lung disease is.

All targets for the 3-month campaign were significantly over-achieved:

Objective 1: Grow unique website visits by 45%, to a total of 30,400

Result: Unique website visit growth of 199%, to a total of 62,805

Objective 2: Get 4,560 Australians to engage with the Lung Health Checklist

Result: 43,736 Australians engaged with the Lung Health Checklist

Objective 3: Increase issue awareness and understanding over the campaign period

Results: a) Increased the perception that lung health is important, up from 80% before the campaign to 84% following the campaign. This is reflective of an extra 700,000 Australians now viewing lung health as important.

b) Increased the number of people who ‘often’ or ‘always’ think about their lung health, from 14% to 17%. While this increase may seem modest this equates to an increase of 525,000 Australians, from under 2.5 million up to 3 million, who now regularly think about their lung health.