Our insight was simple: Quitting smoking successfully is a two-person job, with the help of your doctor the other essential ingredient.

Our campaign had to convey this message in an unexpectedly simple way, supported by the only legally approved claim we had: when people enlist the help of a doctor, they’re a whopping 400% more likely to quit than any method.

Our solution was to literally demonstrate how hard it is to do something on your own.

We created films around talent auditions, giving our actors an unexpected challenge: to play the roles of multiple characters in one scene.

Actors were invited to play both the role of Captain Ahab and the whale in the timeless story of Moby Dick, both roles of Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare’s famous play, and the role of both the hapless pigs and the angry wolf in the story of The Three Little Pigs.

We shot long and short-form content for each story, to be used exclusively across social channels and Pfizer’s owned digital assets. These linked back to our landing page, which featured more videos and information.

The genius of our solution was that it totally avoided any issues with regulation and compliance because we weren’t talking about the smoking condition or the treatment.

Once people got the gag, we simply told them that people are four times more likely to quit with the help of a healthcare professional.

The client engaged us in September working towards filming in December with the aim to launch all components in February/March.

Human impact – Using advance profiling techniques we have managed to reach 60% of the 2.2 million smokers in Australia with our message, encouraging them to seek professional help from their HCP to quit smoking.

• Reach – Total reach in first 6 weeks, 9 million.

• Engagement –There are currently 3.55 million people engaged in viewing the videos.

• Sales – Full figures unavailable as the campaign has just launched, research has shown the time between engagement of a message to prescription fulfilment sits between 60 and 90 days.

• Achievement against business targets – Campaign is in its first quarter, results and activity ongoing.