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Brussels, 15 October 2009 – HELPISODES EU launches provocative, audacious and humorous anti-smoking campaign

Media promotion page: www.helpers-eu.com/press

As part of the HELP For a life without tobacco campaign a new and innovative animated web series called Helpisodes has been developed. The viral campaign is aimed at enhancing the reach of the campaign amongst young people raising their awareness of tobacco issues.

The development of Helpisodes continues the participative strategy of the HELP campaign in 2009 and will be reinforced by the use of conversational and community sites such as Facebook and Bebo. A partnership with the Daily Motion video site also plays an integral role in the campaign.

In order to ensure the relevance and pertinence of Helpisodes to its audience the concept and development of them was carried out in cooperation with a variety of European Youth Organisations who are partners of the HELP Campaign.

A total of 12 Helpisodes have been created. Each episode is one and half minutes long with the exception of the pilot which introduces the main characters (Helpers) and how they came to be together and were transformed into anti-smoking super heroes. Each Helpisode will show a young European confronted with a tobacco related issue. In order to get help, they call on an efficient and determined trio of Helpers. To assist them, the three heroes will successfully offer original and crazy solutions to the problem.

The Helpisodes operation will be provocative and audacious, in order to capture the attention of todays increasingly fickle young audience. The humorous shock tactics and quirky graphics, are common currency in web operations, which employ a freedom of expression and humour which are a world apart from traditional TV campaigns.

The aim of these absurd and, above all, humorous Helpisodes is to communicate with young people in a language they understand and appreciate, making them aware of tobacco issues and improving their connection to the Help message, and then leading them to real tips and advice available on the main Help website.

The series is closely tied into, and reinforces, the HELP Campaigns tips to quit strategy, with each Helpisode showing an absurd tip, addressing one of the key themes of the Help campaign: prevention, cessation and passive smoking, and will finish by leading the Internet user to real tips available on help-eu.com

Over the course of 2009 young people across Europe have been contributing their own video tips to quit, either directly through the HELP website or at roadshow events across the European Union. In the UK the HELP Roadshow attended a number of youth and sports orientated events including NASS (an action sports and music festival), the British Beach Volleyball championships and the Edinburgh Marathon.

The web-series will be hosted on the Help website, in a specific section entirely dedicated to the Helpisodes campaign. This section will display the content in a simplified and intuitive structure: one very long page which immediately shows all the available content – increasingly popular on websites for young people.

The Helpisodes (and mini-site) are launched on 15 October 2009 and will be broadcast until September 2010.

Further information

Pictures of the Helpers: attached. For more images or video content please contact us (details below)

Website: http://en.helpers-eu.com Media promotion site : www.helpers-eu.com/press

Press contact

Kestrel Worldcom (UK)

Niall Dologhan or Naomi van Moppes

Tel : +44 208 789 2587

e-mail : n.dologhan@kestrelcomms.co.uk

Ligaris Europe (Brussels)

Emile Clemens

Tel +32 647 24 00 – +32 475 71 37 70

e-mail: e.clemens@ligaris.eu

HELP For a life without tobacco

The HELP For a life without tobacco campaign of the European Commission aims at convincing people not to start or to quit smoking with a TV and Web campaign and different activities in the 27 European Member States. The press releases, press kits, logo and images from the HELP campaign can be downloaded from the Web site www.help-eu.com Login: help Password: pressdesk

WebChat TV

On Friday 16th October the Help Campaign will be broadcasting a live WebChat featuring Professor Gerard Hastings, Director of the Intstitute for Social Marketing, and Alison Walsh, Youth Presenter and Advisor for Quit, an independent charity which helps smokers to stop. The interactive web chat invites viewers to contact the show with questions and their own stop smoking tips. It will be broadcast at 3pm at www.webchats.tv and relayed on a number of other youth related websites.

Note

Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use which might be made of this information

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