AMV BBDO made smokers read a poster in one breath for Cancer Research UK

Promote the effectiveness of local Stop Smoking Services to smokers who want to quit — motivating them to seek a solution, not just scaring them about consequences.

Bus-stop and shopping-centre posters styled like cigarette-pack health warnings asked passers-by to read the text in one go; Clear Channel, Grand Visual and MediaCom UK built the first digital poster driven by breath, with a Facebook version and a radio ad performed by a real smoker in one breath; bespoke guerrilla ads landed where breath runs out — football stadiums, dog bins, parks, churches, even condoms.

No campaign results were published — the work's stated shift was tonal: engaging smokers through a game that made the lung-capacity message land 'without feeling ashamed about their habit'.

In March 2017, Cancer Research UK and AMV BBDO launched 'The Breath Test', an outdoor, experiential, social, guerrilla, press and radio campaign promoting local Stop Smoking Services to smokers who'd like to quit. Its visual style mimicked the typography of a cigarette-pack health warning.

The mechanic was the message. Bus-stop and shopping-centre posters invited passers-by to read the text aloud in one go, without stopping — a game that gets harder the more smoking has cost your lungs. With Clear Channel, Grand Visual and MediaCom UK, the team built what LBB called the first digital poster to use breath to reveal its message on screen: the longer you blew, the more of the ad appeared.

The game spread across channels — a Facebook execution for phones, a radio ad in which an actual smoker tried to read the whole spot in one breath, and guerrilla placements placed exactly where breath would run out: football stadiums, dog bins, parks, churches and even condoms. The agency framed it as a deliberate break from gory anti-smoking tropes: instead of scaring smokers, it invited them to play, absorbing the message without feeling ashamed.

The category convention was fear — tar in lungs, mutating cells — and CRUK needed motivation to seek help, not another fright.

The game made the harm self-demonstrating: struggling to finish the sentence is diminished lung capacity, experienced firsthand.

The digital 6-sheet was a first — breath as the input device for an out-of-home message.

Guerrilla media planning matched the mechanic, placing messages where smokers would literally run out of breath.

Let the audience perform the problem: a one-breath reading test demonstrates diminished lung capacity better than any image of tarred lungs, and without the shame.

The campaign ran locally for three weeks to the end of March 2017, with media planned by MediaCom UK. No performance figures were published; LBB archived the work with full AMV BBDO credits.