Korea has a 21.6% smoking rate, one of the highest among OECD countries (2014). In response the South Korean Government set out the National Health Promotion Plan aimed at reducing smoking rates in the country. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is to prevent or delay the entry of new smokers’, which naturally means preventing teens from starting to smoke.

In Korea, teens start to smoke as early as aged 12, while the smoking rate of male seniors at high school has reached 24.5%. These teen smoking rates have remained unchanged for a decade.

It was clear that traditional health-related anti-smoking campaigns were not getting through to young Koreans. In order to encourage teens to quit or never start smoking, we needed to show our teens it’s actually cool NOT to smoke and give them a symbol to show “I don’t smoke and I’m never going to”.

Using Facebook as the core campaign platform, participants were invited to share content by tagging friends. Those who tagged two or more friends were sent free Fingerbands.

Collaborating with a popular webtoon-ist, we created a webtoon series, and developed an online ‘webdrama’ starring a real-life Korean idol, that told stories about teenagers facing the temptations of smoking and peer pressures in daily life. The Fingerband, along with campaign banners, were integrated into the content and the characters invited participation in the campaign.

We promoted the campaign across various online/mobile/social platforms, including Facebook, a fashion website and Naver. We also formed a partnership with Aboki, a popular teen fashion brand, and persuaded them to feature the Fingerband in their brand campaign commercials.

Executed from July to December 2015, the campaign reached 284,000+ teens, who in turn influenced their friends and peer groups.