People living with COPD feel considerable guilt and shame for having brought on their disease through smoking. However even with these debilitating physical and psychological effects, 40% of patients continue to smoke.
With this concept, we empathize with the audience, recognizing smoking’s past appeal and its addictive nature. But this doesn’t mean patients now need to resign themselves to a sub-optimal life with COPD. They can and should speak to their doctor about treatment options that could improve their breathing and quality of life.
Visually captivating and brimming with understanding and acceptance, we remind patients that people make mistakes, but that they also deserve forgiveness. Further opening the dialogue with their doctors about the rest of their lives by giving them permission to ask for more.
Despite its dire consequences and often inadequately-managed symptoms, COPD and its treatments are not always understood by patients. And patients are not particularly engaged in learning about them. In part, this resignation to their condition has its roots in judgement towards themselves for having brought it on themselves in the first place.
This campaign aims to motivate patients to put aside the self-recriminations and be more proactive in their own treatment. Rather than accepting their fate passively, patients can voice concerns to their doctor and change their perception of their own self-worth as well as how they look at their life with COPD.
Contrasting the passive with the active in its presentation, this concept asks patients to demand more from life and their therapy by making them feel what the consequences of inactivity with their condition will be like if they don't talk to their doctor soon.
This online, mobile, and outdoor campaign spoke to the insight that those with COPD can feel that their addiction to cigarettes is a physical barrier that prevents them from living a better life, but a talk with their doctor can help them break through their emotional obstacles.
