• by Aaron Baar , May 13, 2010

"We really wanted people to understand our fight for healthy air," Carrie Martin, a representative of the American Lung Association, tells Marketing Daily. "What we want to do is affect people's awareness not of who we are, but what we do."

The advertising campaign is an expansion of "Fighting for Air," brand positioning that the organization adopted in November 2009. That positioning was born from market research that showed 96% of the American population was aware of the American Lung Association, although many didn't know the full scope of the agency's mission.

"We felt [the positioning] worked on multiple levels to help people understand what we do, whether it's supporting people with lung disease or advocacy on Capitol Hill," Martin tells Marketing Daily. "We wanted to create advertising that showcased all that we do."

The television, radio, print and out-of-home campaign goes about the difficult task of "depicting air," Martin says. Visuals include a boy playing a trombone, a girl flying a kite and a man scuba-diving with an air bubble surrounding him. (Other visuals, more pertinent to the message, include a bus running on natural gas and a woman sitting in a non-smoking section.)

"We're fighting for clear skies over every city and healthy lungs throughout the country," says a voiceover. "The American Lung Association isn't just fighting for air, we're fighting for all the things that make it worth breathing."

"We wanted to include imagery that made people think about breathing," Martin says.

The campaign is being distributed to media outlets nationwide during May and June. It will be up to those media outlets and their public service staffers to determine when -- or if -- they will be displayed, Martin says. "We're hoping that PSA directors haven't seen the American Lung Association in awhile and will be receptive to our brand and dedicate some ad space," she says.