Client: Glaxo Smith Kline Australia
Creative: Andy Fergusson, Claire Gillis, Neil Heymann
Director: Banjo Fitzsimons

Battle for the Bronchs is an asthma awareness campaign for Glaxo Smith Kline Australia that features an interactive comic book combining live action video, set in a unique illustrated city inside a pair of lungs, and narrative-integrated ‘breath-controlled’ games: www.battleforthebronchs.com.au

GSK Respiratory wanted to use the internet to reach a specific segment of Australian asthmatics aged 20 – 30, classified by the health industry as ‘young avoiders’ and ‘embarrassed and worried’. As these people tend to ignore traditional advertising media, GSK’s brief was to create an online marketing piece that would create buzz and awareness amongst a general youth audience, as well as drive actual asthma sufferers to ‘take control’ and visit the informational website www.asthmascore.com.au for the direct health message.

TEQUILA\’s solution was to create www.battleforthebronchs.com.au , an online branded comedy with fleshed-out characters, a great script and a fresh visual style to stand out from the ‘viral’ marketing clutter. Battle for the Bronchs features an interactive comic book combining live action video set in a unique illustrated city inside a pair of lungs, and narrative-integrated ‘breath-controlled’ games (e.g. Lung-Fu Training). Gamers can choose to play for one of two tribes featured in the video comic – the Triggers or the Airforce – and then claim some turf in the interactive map of the Bronchs city. The site is not media supported, so a spoof movie-style trailer and site link was seeded to video sharing portals, blogs and culture magazines to generate initial viral buzz. Individual games were also seeded to game sharing sites.

So far more than 20,000 people have visited the site since its launch in May 07, generated purely by word of mouth and mentions in the blogosphere.