Lung cancer accounts for 25% of all cancer deaths in the US, resulting in more mortalities than prostate, breast, colorectal, and liver cancers combined. Yet it’s not part of the age-based checks that are standard of care.

Screening can detect lung cancer in its earliest stages where there’s a "90% rate of survival...yet national screening rates remain under 10%.

We targeted people 50+ who smoke(d) heavily. This at-risk group fears lung cancer screening because they’ve been blamed for “choosing to smoke

Stigma is standing in the way of screening. Choosing to smoke has been blamed for getting the disease, but what if smoking wasn’t a conscious choice?

Our task was to create a PSA that would encourage screening. Simply explaining the risk wasn’t going to motivate screening. We had to kill the stigma so we looked to a time when there wasn’t one.

In the 70s and 80s smoking was part of culture and unavoidable. To smoke or not smoke wasn’t really a choice - it’s simply something everyone was expected to do. You could smoke everywhere - on planes, in restaurants, in the movie theater, anywhere.

To be included meant to smoke so everyone did. Even Doctors.

Rather than relying on typical smoking tropes or fear tactics associated with PSAs, our idea was to use nostalgia to bring people back in time to their ‘heyday’ and prime smoking years.

By featuring relevant cultural cues from the 70s and 80s to remind people how culturally accepted, even encouraged smoking was, the campaign removed the blame people felt. We replaced guilt with understanding and fear with nostalgia to show smoking in a non-shameful light.