Healthy Living Through Keith Richards

Sunday February 05, 2006

When I was 16, Keith Richards was not only still recognizable as a member of the human species, he was the coolest human on the planet. He had a bad reputation, a private plane and a cigarette dangling decadently from his lip.

And that cigarette spoke to me as it had for years to millions of kids. It told me that if I smoked, I could be like Keith — unmistakably cool.

So I smoked here and there. Casually. At parties and concerts. If anyone objected, I just sneered. I was 16. And I rocked.

Flash forward, oh, 20 years. I’m an account director at Capstrat, not a rock star. And one of our clients is TRU (Tobacco. Reality. Unfiltered.), North Carolina’s teen tobacco prevention campaign.

Now, it’s my job to keep those Keith wannabes away from the smokes.

So how do you go about talking sense to the incorrigible kid you used to be?

First, it was clear that neither I nor anyone like me should be doing any talking. Burned into my teenage memory was a certain math teacher who tried to preach my buddies and me into healthier habits. The more he railed, the more he failed.

The only people I listened to back in those daredevil days were my friends. So, the stars of our TV campaign had to be kids. Research backed this up —the best hope of punching through kids’ double-coated bubble of recklessness and sense of invincibility was other kids being direct and real about the dangers of tobacco use.

At first, we asked the kids to come to us. An audition open to any teen with a story to tell about tobacco’s toll resulted in many moving stories. One of those TRU TV spots took home a Telly Award.

But something was missing. An edge. An aggressiveness. And that’s when Keith swaggered back into the picture. I knew Keith’s image so well back in the day because the Stones were on tour. He and his cigarette were everywhere, tearin’ it up, leaving a lasting impression.

We could do it, too. TRU could go on tour!

And so, with the backing of TRU’s funder, the NC Health and Wellness Trust Fund, we launched a veritable Don’t-Smoke-apalooza, a traveling circus including tobacco prevention exhibits, contests and a video crew capturing teen testimonials. Capstrat’s creatives christened it the TRU Road Trip and stocked it with the right rock ’n’ roll attitude via tour t-shirts and screamingly colorful graphics. We were stylin’.

At this point it’s worth mentioning that North Carolina is primo tobacco country. The people here built whole cities on the golden leaf. A tobacco-use prevention campaign in the Tarheel state is akin to pizza prevention in NYC, Prada prevention in L.A.

But that against-the-grain attitude gave the Road Trip a bad boy edge that very much appealed to the 16-year-old me, who had become my constant companion and relentless B.S. detector.

The teenage me watched the footage flooding back from our Road Trip video crew with keen interest and sharp skepticism. Were the testimonials hard-hitting and on-the-level enough? Oftentimes not.

And then the editor came across a scruffy kid named Johnny. The camera crew had found him sitting on a curb in a beach town, watching the Road Trip festivities ... as he puffed on a smoke. A kid Keith!

A smart producer started up a conversation. It was tense at first. But gradually, the kid opened up. He had started smoking at age eight. He was hooked, and he hated it. “It makes me feel down, low about myself,” Johnny said. “Every time you smoke another cigarette, there goes another bit of your life.”

My teenage self understood this alienated kid and believed him. Johnny spoke to the scruffy teen in every account exec and designer in our office. And he became the star of our next spot.

Later, when an evaluation team from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill tested our commercials alongside others — including a national spot — with NC kids, Johnny’s testimonial ranked highest. Number one with a bullet. And the TRU Road Trip itself ended up a finalist for a SABRE Award in the Marketing to Youth category, competing against campaigns for Microsoft and Nintendo.

TRU found a tone that connects. My 16-year-old self can rest easy ... for the moment.

As for my smoking habit, it never really took root. Even more than wanting to look like Keith, I wanted to date one or both of a set of twins at my high school. They played soccer and hated smoking. I ditched the cigs. Eventually, I got the date.

Billy Warden is an account director at Capstrat.