The Blow Off campaign is a guerilla anti-smoking campaign that was distributed on the Georgia State University campus after the campus became a smoke-free campus. The campaign consisted of comics highlighting the unique problems of smoking in the highly social environment of a college campus.
The comics lived online on a tumblr that updated three times weekly. Visits to this tumblr were gauged with google analytics. The site saw a steady rise in traffic during the campaign, including repeat visitors. Most traffic came from direct hits from comics that were left on tables, bulletin boards, and other places on campus.
This campaign was created and maintained by a small team for a semester. It was accompanied by a facebook page, which was the second biggest director of traffic to the tumblr.
The aim of the campaign was to address the special issues that college students face when they engage in smoking. Our team noticed that many traditional techniques didn't work well with college students. Scare tactics involving gruesome photos of the consequences didn't play well with a group either too young to believe that they would be affected by consequences or too preoccupied with balancing work, school, and friends to make a change that big.
For these reasons, we focused on the social and financial ramifications of smoking. Since cigarette smoke is very pungent and gets on everything, we focused on how people may avoid smokers to avoid the smoke, how it could seep into walls and cost money in fines, and how people could run afoul of campus security.
The aim of the campaign was to address the special issues that college students face when they engage in smoking. Our team noticed that many traditional techniques didn't work well with college students. Scare tactics involving gruesome photos of the consequences didn't play well with a group either too young to believe that they would be affected by consequences or too preoccupied with balancing work, school, and friends to make a change that big.
For these reasons, we focused on the social and financial ramifications of smoking. Since cigarette smoke is very pungent and gets on everything, we focused on how people may avoid smokers to avoid the smoke, how it could seep into walls and cost money in fines, and how people could run afoul of campus security.
To echo this purpose, we blended a clean, chic 1920's look with modern fashions and settings. The aim was to keep social graces close to the reader's mind. For ease and speed of producing the comics, facial features were omitted and characters were only shown from the side. Since cigarette smoke is dark, we did the characters in dark, shadowy colors. We also chose a very limited, muted color palette since the smoke dulls things.
