“Marie” Anti-Smoking Campaign Launches
You may have seen Marie around the city in the past couple days. She’s the one with the amputated fingers. Her hands are hard to miss and hard to stop thinking about too. We met her last year when we were developing a new anti-smoking campaign for New York’s Department of Health. To follow up on our “Smoking is Eating You Alive” spots, we wanted to tell the story of a real New Yorker who has really suffered from smoking.
We got to know Marie pretty well (check out the pictures from her photo and video shoots). Like any born-and-bred New Yorker, she told her story like it is, sparing no details about what her smoking-related sicknesses have done to her (it turns out amputations were just the beginning…).
Press about the campaign
New York Times — City Unveils Another Hard-Hitting 'Don't Smoke' Ad
NY1 — Former Smoker's Story Is Latest Weapon In City's Anti-Smoking Campaign
NYC Press Release — New TV Ads Feature Marie, A Bronx Smoker Who Quit By Calling 311
NY Daily News — Smoker Who Lost Fingers, Toes in New Anti-Cigarette Ads
311 is New York’s number for everything. The NYC Department of Health wanted to promote it as an alternative to giving change to homeless people on the street. We created subway ads asking New Yorkers to “give the homeless the kind of change they can really use” by calling 311. An operator can dispatch a street team to get the homeless real help. 
We had a week to develop this campaign to convince New Yorkers to give up their bottled water in favor of tap. We must work well under pressure because these ads attracted a lot of attention. They still make us thirsty. 
Remember Ronaldo Martinez? He was featured in a slew of anti-smoking commercials around 2000. The spots showed Ronaldo’s life after he had his voice box removed from throat cancer caused by smoking. 
You know you’ve got New York’s attention when Andrea Peyser of the Post writes a column about you. Our “Cigarettes are Eating You Alive” campaign sparked some controversy, but it got people to quit smoking. We combined computer-generated imagery of the inside of a body diseased from cigarettes and real photos in commercials to drive home the damage smoking can do. 
There’s nothing more New York than the subway and… sex. Not necessarily together of course, though we combined them when we branded and designed the packaging for the nation’s first municipally sponsored condoms. People from Oklahoma to Japan talked about these condoms, and we heard they are even a few on eBay now.
