This idea was only made possible through the power of media, including a first-of-its-kind impression-based Xbox plan (with zero production fees), a long-term negotiation with Google that yielded the biggest gaming influencer on the planet and a radically different media approach that made an anti-smoking Xbox game as wildly popular as any other game on the market.

We broke new ground in the category, going beyond conventions to produce a video game that challenged teens' concept of cigarette addiction and creating a new media channel in the process.

It’s easy to look at the popularity of vaping and juuling and conclude that cigarettes aren’t cool for teens anymore. But every day in the U.S., about 2,000 kids under 18 smoke their first cigarette. And since nearly 9 out of 10 smokers start before the age of 18, the teen tobacco problem is the tobacco problem. As a response, the government introduced The Real Cost – a program designed to educate teens about the dangers of tobacco by making the consequences feel more immediate to them. The issue is that teens see addiction as an “old person” problem, something that happens later in life. Yet the truth is that 3 out of 4 teens who smoke cigarettes will stay smokers well into adulthood. Our challenge was to drive awareness of the potential for immediate cigarette addiction amongst an audience accustomed to ignoring public health messages.

Our ‘3 out of 4’ addiction statistic was a revelation, proving that teen smoking is more likely than not to become adult addiction. But we couldn’t fall into the old trap of simply telling this to teens, we needed to make them feel the consequences. So instead of a standard spot, we created something entirely new – a video game. While product placement and sponsorships are now tried and true gaming tactics, we knew we needed to go a level beyond to cut-through, so we became the first commercial partner to ever actually produce a game with Xbox. Titled One Leaves, the game placed teens in a grim metaphor for nicotine addiction. Part high school. Part hospital. Total hell. Like smoking, for every four who go in…only one leaves. Players race against each other, encountering obstacles and puzzles inspired by the consequences of smoking.

Teens at risk of cigarette smoking often struggle at home or in school. They are stressed, challenge authority, exhibit poor coping skills, and have a pessimistic outlook on life. One thing that unites them is a desire to escape their situation or circumstance – that’s part of the appeal of smoking. What they don’t realize is that 3 out of 4 teen smokers will become adult smokers, even if they intend to quit after a few years. The ironic truth is that their desire to escape through smoking is actually what ends up trapping them. Qualitative research revealed teens do actually “see” smoking addiction every day – outside office buildings, isolation in smoking areas and even locked out of restaurants. That led us to our strategic idea: addiction is a real place that can keep you trapped. A strategy that needed to be felt, not told.

Our media strategy required a two-pronged approach, branded and unbranded, in order to build credibility within the gaming community while still ensuring we delivered TRC messaging. We created a market-first with Xbox, using negotiated media to create an impression-based plan with zero production fees. Knowing we wanted to treat the campaign like any big Xbox game launch, we filmed high-action trailers with director Darren Aronofsky and ran them across digital and social channels, a radical departure from standard public health campaigns. We set up a real-life version of One Leaves at the Winter X Games, a major extreme sports event that attracts a strong teen following on ESPN. To further entice our audience, we ran high-impact units and products reviews on Fandom and 3D audio ads for streaming channels. We worked exclusively with Google and Ninja, the biggest gamer on the planet, who helped drive hype, downloads and critically-important conversation.

Given the unchartered space of gaming, setting measurable KPIs was a challenge. Based on what we did know (from other game launches), it was considered that 100,000 downloads of the game, after the 8 week campaign, would be a considered a great result.

We smashed it.

One Leaves saw more than 437,000 downloads in its first 6 weeks. Shortly after launch, we repurposed content from launch materials and the game itself to amplify the message to more than just gamers. In two weeks, we garnered over 102 million total impressions and over 98 million total video impressions of campaign messaging, resulting in hundreds of thousands of teens being exposed to the powerful message of ‘three out of four teens who start smoking will not escape the addiction’. Most impressively, we matched or equaled gaming industry benchmarks, validating our unconventional approach that finally got teens thinking about the smoking addiction trap.