When you’re a teen, your lungs are still growing. But if you smoke cigarettes, their growth can be permanently stunted. Meet Little Lungs. He’s a stop-motion animated, teen-targeted, media-agnostic dude. He’s game, he’s rad, and he’s up for whatever. But he smokes, so he’s stunted, with tragi-comic consequences.
As part of the Food & Drug Administration Center for Tobacco Products’ “The Real Cost” campaign, FCB New York has developed a new digital campaign–“Little Lungs”–that aims to educate teens about the dangers and harmful effects of tobacco use.
In this anthem spot, the Little Lungs character can’t generate enough exhale power to blow out the candles on his birthday cake–an inability that carries rugged consequences.
FCB New York created Little Lungs to resonate with a teen audience and target them within the digital environments they frequent – namely YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. Specifically, the campaign focuses on reaching at-risk teens, who live a more chaotic lifestyle and suffer from lower socioeconomic and educational levels making them more stressed out than their peers.
Ari Halper, chief creative officer at FCB New York, commented on the campaign: “What Little Lungs lacks in respiratory capacity, he makes up for in spades with lovability, craftily delivering his message about the dangers of teenage smoking by packaging them in a very entertaining animated content series.”
