The interesting session on Health Promotion was chaired by ECL member Dutch Cancer Society's Stefan Wigger. I had joined the session late, but was just in time for the presentation by Cancer Research UK's marketing Manager, A. Brown, who gave example of ads as part of her presentation on "Smoke is Poison - advertising to raise awareness of toxic chemicals in tobacco smoke" .
The ads are viewable here.
The ads are interviews with people who work with hazardous chemicals, and show the natural surprised reactions of the workers when they are told that those same dangerous chemicals are found in cigarette smoke. Re the ad on "Formaldehyde Video Ad", the speaker said the funeral manager, a heavy smoker, was genuinely shocked and proceeded to quit after the video was made.
The presentation "Evaluation of a National Anti-Tobacco Campaign Based on Testimonials" by Kari Huseby, was on the evaluation of a Norwegian mass media campaign. The aim of the campaign was to reduce youth smoking rates by 50% in 5 years. The campaign tried to integrate as many elements as possible, including welcome posters at the airport with the message "Welcome to Norway, the only thing we smoke is salmon." Some lessons learned from the campaign included:
- media campaigns generate national debate;
- PR work surprisingly easy; and
- central planning important – local followup.
Evaluations of the campaign show an increase in knowledge about tobacco and health. Information on the campaign and films in English here. A participant commented that he was surprised that the campaign used older people as models, yet the target group was youth, and wondered, for e.g., how effective was the COPD ad with an old man. The reply was that focus groups testing the films showed that young people were affected because they imagined that the old man with COPD could be their father or grandfather, and didn't want this to happen to the people they love.
Another comment was on the video clip on the tobacco industry's invasion in developing countries and whether this was really effective since the general public tend not to be so symathetic about other, far away countries. The reply was that this clip actually created the most outrage in youth. They were angry and shocked at how the tobacco industry could get away with such tactics in developing countries.
I couldn't help but be impressed at how kind and gentle these Norwegian youth are, caring about their grandparents and developing countries. How would youth in your own country evaluate these clips, you think?
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