Environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy has selected London agency VCCP to lead a new campaign aimed at drastically reducing the amount of cigarette butt littering.
Accounting for a staggering 66% of all litter dropped in England, Keep Britain tidy estimates that at any given moment there are 2.4 million dropped cigarette butts on the nation’s high streets – taking a damaging 14 years to degrade into microplastics.
VCCP secured the project at the conclusion of a three-way competitive pitch process, working in collaboration with its behavioural science consultancy Cowry Consulting.
“Cigarette butts remain the single most littered item in our country. At Keep Britain Tidy, we are on a mission to dramatically reduce cigarette litter by 2025, which is no small undertaking,” Keep Britain Tidy CEO Alison Ogden-Newton said.
Subscribe to Marketing Beat for free
Sign up here to get the latest marketing news sent straight to your inbox each morning
“We were impressed by VCCP and Cowry’s audience research at pitch stage, drawing insights that have been translated into engaging and persuasive creative. We are greatly excited about the work and look forward to launching the campaign later this year.”
Launching across the UK this November, the campaign will look to drive concrete behavioural change in smokers, after research indicated that whilst most would not litter items such as cans or crisp packet – they did not consider dropping cigarette butts to be a major issue.
VCCP CEO Andrew Peake added: “Littering is both ugly and costly, so I was quite shocked to learn that some smokers don’t regard dropping cigarette butts in the same category as other litter.
“I’m pleased that with our colleagues in Cowry Consulting,we can do our bit to help stub out this littering behaviour and to correct some people’s views about the impact of their habits.”
