Health Appeal Smokes Vintage Cigarette Ad Tropes

Quitting's easy if you just try harder, OK?

So, you want to quit smoking? It’s just a matter of willpower. Thanks for clearing that up, Achieve Life Sciences!

The biotech firm, which is developing a potential treatment for smoking cessation, turns the tables on bygone cigarette ad tropes in stylish posters from Goodby Silverstein & Partners.

London-based illustrators Oliver Bland and Olivia Chancellor, aka The Red Dress, helped develop the OOH push that drops today, timed to the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. It also dovetails with the second Friday of the year, when most folks quit their New Year’s resolutions.

The team studied “the visual language and compositional techniques of vintage poster campaigns from the 1940s through the 1960s,” GS&P associate CD Maria Sousa Machado tells Muse. “Those ads focused on saturated color palettes, assertive typographic pairings and hand-rendered illustrations with an airbrushed, idealized quality. They stressed confident characters and sweeping promises that defined the era.”

“Treating willpower like a product allows the campaign to parody the long-held belief that quitting smoking is simply a matter of choice or discipline alone,” says Claire Stokes, also an agency ACD. “Using the overconfidence of vintage advertising to highlight how unrealistic that expectation has always been.”

The campaign will appear in S.F. via digital billboards, hotel room media and taxi screens.

“By portraying willpower as a ‘miracle solution,’ we’re deliberately calling out an outdated expectation, that people should be able to overcome nicotine dependence through sheer determination alone,” says Jaime Xinos, Achieve’s chief commercial officer. “The reality is many people need more than willpower. Nicotine dependence is a medical condition that deserves a new medical solution.”

CREDITS

GS&P 
Chief Creative Officer: Margaret Johnson 
Associate Creative Director: Maria Sousa Machado 
Associate Creative Director: Claire Stokes 
Group Account Director: Shanley McClure 
Account Director: Ian Braun 
Account Manager: Rachel Diaz 
Group Strategy Director: Caitlin Neelon 
Junior Brand Strategist: Aryana Ghazi-Hessami 
Junior Communication Strategist: Riya Sinha 
Junior Research and Analytics Strategist: Aliann English 
Executive Producer: Danielle Riccardi  
Producer: Hanna Hegnell 

Achieve Life Sciences 
Chief Commercial Officer: Jaime Xinos