TICK-TOCK

Blue Cross Blue Shield was faced with the difficult task of building an anti-tobacco social marketing campaign aimed at college students. Research showed that most young adults were uninterested in dire messages encouraging them to quit smoking. Tick-Tock emerged as a fun, irreverent, award-winning integrated campaign. To help support the print, traditional outdoor and web elements of the campaign – and bring the brand guerrilla credibility -- Street Factory was enlisted to carry the message one-on-one via street teams and through on-campus wild posting and chalk stenciling on 30 campuses. A recent survey conducted at one of the campaign’s main sites – the University of Minnesota – showed that student tobacco use has decreased by 25% during the first three years of the campaign, while the national average has increased over that same period of time.