Project Overview
The Victorian Government’s Working Group of ‘Supporting Patients to be Smokefree’, led by Alfred Health, approached Immediacy for a creative solution to help health professionals to overcome their concerns about starting the conversation with their patients about smoking.
The point of the short film was to demonstrate that many patients really want to have that conversation and have the support of their clinician. The film challenges the commonly held misperception of clinicians through real life stories. That is where the power of the film lies in changing behaviour.
Also, the irony is that the film asks clinicians to change their behaviours – not the smoking patient – in effect, reversing the traditional roles.
The key communication was further expanded to include other platforms designed by the Immediacy team such as a web microsite, web banners, screen saver, a display banner and postcards.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Executive Producer - Linda Marshall
Director/Writer - Ilana Werba
Production Coordinator - Ruby Nelson-Will
Graphics - Willy Beecher
Editor - Peter Cave
DOP - Paul Hicks
Project Brief
Smoking harms nearly every organ in your body: it is the leading cause of preventable death and disease in Australia. Consequently helping people stop smoking is a major public health priority. The film seeds the idea in the mind of clinicians that initiating the ‘smoking conversation’ is actually wanted or welcomed by many patients and it can have great effect. The film is designed to be the conversation starter.
Research has shown that smokers are responsive when they are approached by health professionals, but many clinicians are simply not having the conversation. This short film was designed to address the absence of this very important conversation and to motivate clinicians to initiate more of these interactions.
Project Innovation/Need
The film presented a great opportunity to connect with clinicians, the primary audience, who are
often time poor, on the move and not always desk-bound. They are wary of anything with a gimmick and reluctant to watch anything that seems dated, didactic or patronising.
We started the process by asking:
• What will grab the attention of the clinicians and convince them to watch the program?
• What will resonate with them so strongly that they will send the program on to a colleague?
The message at the end of the program needed to be clear - the health professional audience needed to overcome their concerns (for a variety reasons) about starting the conversation with their patients about smoking.
The most effective way was to use real life stories to challenge commonly held misperceptions of clinicians. That is the power of the film in changing the behaviour of health professionals.
Filmed on several locations at The Alfred gave it a further authenticity and context. The visual style of the program was also carefully designed to connect with the audience and deliver a powerful message.
Design Challenge
We needed to gain the attention of very busy health professionals and then change their behaviour. This was achieved through creative approach including:
• An intriguing introduction with a level of ambiguity in the title and opening scenes that would keep the audience watching
• A dramatic style that avoided looking like a training video or message from the CEO. The opening scenes had a haunting beauty to them and the grade was high contrast, the colours softened.
• Authentic stories, using real comments from real clinicians and patients. They were not scripted. People spoke from the heart and this authenticity moves the audience to be open to the message.
• The authentic stories, bold style and use of statistics make this program compelling. It runs less than 4 minutes and our audience are held until the last frame.
We filmed with the C300 camera which delivers cinema-grade images that are rich and intimate and has outstanding depth of field option. The other benefit is that the C300 is well-suited to accurate colour reproduction, particularly skin tones, which helps produce up close and personal, very compelling storytelling.
Effectiveness
The film has received very positive feedback. Already, the video has been shown to both international and national conference audiences with strongly positive reactions. More than 2,500 microsite sessions have taken place within the first few weeks.
There has been strong support from many health services and peak bodies with personal endorsement from a number of key medical and public health professionals. Finally, the patients who participated are proud of their involvement and the fact that their stories can make a difference to the lives of smokers.
Film, Video, Viral
This award celebrates creative and innovative visual and audio corporate communications that place an emphasis on design values. Consideration given to the technical, conceptual and aesthetic elements, viewer engagement and message delivery.
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