To chronicle the historic milestones that have supported millions of Americans in their journey to quit smoking. And to encourage those still smoking to realize that now is the time to quit. The thing is, smokers don’t want to hear from a brand about the dangers of smoking. They know. And they don’t want to be lectured to. They’ve heard it all before.

To break through, we leveraged iconic cultural milestones familiar to our target audience to contextualize the message in an entertaining, relevant way. The light-hearted animation style helped make a fact-heavy story both easy to digest and worth sharing, all while using history as an inspiration for future behavior change among those still smoking.

Path to Zero was featured prominently across multiple Nicorette and NicoDerm CQ owned properties, including the brand YouTube page, and the soft-branded Quit.com home page.

The video was launched just prior to the 2017 quit season in anticipation of New Year’s Day and the resolution among current smokers to quit.

Nicorette and NicoDerm CQ have been helping people quit for 20 years, leading to over one million successful quits in that time, and counting:

• In the absence of any paid media support, the video has garnered over 10K organic video views, and contributed to over 93 hours of brand exposure

• Average view time of the 2:26 video is 1:42, with 67% of people viewing the video in its entirety

• Of the people that viewed the video, 39% of them took an additional brand-related action