How do you grow participation in a government-funded scheme across an entire city?

The brief

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Stop Smoking London is London's pan-London stop-smoking support brand, commissioned through the London Tobacco Alliance to grow participation in a government-funded scheme across every London borough. The brief was to reach Londoners at varying stages of their stop-smoking journey, across many languages, ages and genders, across the capital city.

What we planned

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We built a segmentation approach around behavioural and demographic data points, mapped to a defined London geography, so ad messaging could be tailored to where each audience was in their quit journey rather than delivered as one generic message. The plan was later extended to include audiences interested in vaping, in line with government guidance and the scheme's funding requirements. The annual Stoptober campaign took the national creative and channel selection and localised it for London, delivered with communications partner Gardiner Richardson, and was planned from the outset as the launch point for a longer, always-on relationship.

How it ran

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Delivery has run across Meta, Twitter/X, Google paid search and SEO content on the Stop Smoking London website, using lookalike and retargeting audiences built from past site visitors. The Stoptober push feeds into a year-round always-on layer signposting local support and the Smokefree app for London, with No Smoking Day each March as the other seasonal peak. Creative is refreshed each year, and we report monthly to both Stop Smoking London and the London Tobacco Alliance, the scheme's commissioning body.

What the reporting showed

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Engagement has beaten sector benchmarks. Site visitors rose 71% year on year to November 2023, on-site engagement grew substantially, and Meta click-through rates in the No Smoking Day 2025 peak ran well ahead of the healthcare-sector benchmark. During No Smoking Day week, overall site visits rose fourfold, and organic site users have more than doubled year on year. Google conversions have also shifted towards Smokefree app downloads as the primary goal, which we have used with Stop Smoking London as an optimisation signal for where to focus paid media.

Campaign results

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Campaign results, Stoptober onwards, year round

Measure	Result
Site visitors, year on year to November 2023	Up 71%
Site visitors new to the website, year to November 2023	97%
Overall site visits, No Smoking Day 2025 campaign	Rose fourfold

Source: Route reporting for Stop Smoking London and the London Tobacco Alliance; SSL and LTA site-usage reports, year to 27 November 2023; No Smoking Day 2025 campaign reporting.