Media
State programs offer lessons on effective anti-tobacco media campaigns
CHICAGO, Aug 14 (Reuters Health) - Successful anti-tobacco media campaigns need not be directed toward smokers, and viewer reactions are not always what experts expected, according to researchers from states with aggressive campaigns, who offered tips to colleagues here at the 11th World Conference on Tobacco or Health.
Jon C. Lloyd, of the California Department of Health Services, said that rather than just lecturing smokers about the hazards of tobacco, effective media campaigns reach out to change the attitudes of the whole population. "Media campaigns work because they really have the power to influence the landscape of consciousness, and they can put some idea or issue out there and make it prominent in broad populations," Lloyd said.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researcher Karen K. Gutierrez said that she is often asked whether a media campaign by itself can reduce smoking rates. "I won't say that it's impossible to do so," she said. "What I will say is that...in cases where they have been successful in making inroads in reducing tobacco consumption or prevalence, they've had programs that have relied very heavily on a whole comprehensive set of tobacco control program elements that we believe have worked very synergistically."
Elements of comprehensive tobacco control campaigns include tax increases, regulations to make public areas smoke-free, education and local community action.
Massachusetts spends more per capita on anti-tobacco ads than any other state. Lois Biener, of the Center for Survey Research in Boston, Massachusetts, said that focus groups, surveys and other tests of the ads show that sad or negative messages about the effects of smoking are consistently rated as more effective. She added that the results are consistent across groups of smokers, former smokers and nonsmokers.
In addition to the hard-hitting spots, the Massachusetts campaign does air a few ads with light-hearted messages, like one showing a former smoker who had recovered so much lung capacity that she blew her birthday cake right out a window. However, Biener said that viewers from the community give these spots lower marks. "In fact, the funnier an ad was seen to be by judges, the lower its rating by all three groups of respondents," she said.
The apparent success of media campaigns in states such as California has come with a price. Jon Lloyd pointed out that when a conservative governor took office in the early 1990s, campaign funding was cut and media messages that attacked the tobacco industry were softened. "I think the program has continued to work...even under the duress of that kind of climate," Lloyd told the tobacco conference delegates. "But it could have been better if we had had more support. I think this is something you have to expect, that the battle is going to be with the tobacco industry and their influence, which is very strong."
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