To capture the attention of a teen audience, we modernized the classic fairytale, “The Three Little Pigs”, and added a twist. In cinematic fashion, we took the Big Bad Wolf—who, in the original narrative, makes his infamous debut by blowing down a straw house—and demonstrated how his lungs, permanently stunted by smoking as a teen, limited his potential.

The Straw City integrated campaign launched across various platforms on October 31, 2016, including TV, pre-roll, online video, paid social, and our website, amassing more than 13 million video views to date. The campaign was featured in Campaign Live and The Drum. We then rolled out a :60 spot in early 2017, to convey the full story and show the depth of Straw City. The spot will run in movie theaters during the summer blockbuster season, as its cinematic fashion lends itself to this platform.

Since launch (Oct 31, 2016), and at the time of this writing, Straw City has received over 13 million video views, with over 170,000 interactions on social channels, including Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. During quantitative copy testing, Straw City received a Perceived Effectiveness score of 3.88. Creative with a score above 3.0 has been proven effective in driving tobacco-related attitudes and behavior change.