Trish Cotter about the media campaigns of the Cancer Institute in New South Wales

Rendez-vous 169,   June 19, 2007

Thank you Trish for taking the time to be with us today.
May I ask you to introduce yourself?

Trish Cotter: My first ever job after University (BSc) was with the Victorian Quit Campaign (over 20 years ago). It was just being set up and I was the second person to be employed.  My first role was as a project assistant and I expected to be at Quit Victoria for 12 months and then move on to something else.  Thirteen years later I finally moved on having had many different roles and seen lots of exciting changes such as banning tobacco advertising and the first well funded mass media campaigns.

After a few years at the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, finishing a Masters in Public Health and having time off to have two children we moved to Sydney. For almost the past three years I've had the pleasure to work for Professor Jim Bishop at the Cancer Institute NSW where his commitment to funding tobacco control has enabled me and my team to develop the media campaigns that motivate and remind smokers to quit.

Q1. You have started airing a film about stroke called The Voice Within. As I understand it is a "real story" but you have chosen to use actors. Can you tell us about it? I am also intrigued by how you "got in touch" with David Bostock, the real patient whose story inspired the ad.

Trish Cotter:  It's perhaps a little unusual for a cancer organisation to put so many resources into a different health issue such as stroke.  Our position is that it doesn't matter which health issue motivates a smoker to quit as long as it works it will eventually have an impact on cancer.

The Voice Within Campaign is part of our National Health Warnings campaign which is designed to bring the new graphic health warnings on packs to life. 

As with all the campaigns we do, we put a great amount of effort into researching the issue before we even start to produce a commercial.  Part of this research is to contact all the relevant stakeholders - in this case the National Stroke Foundation, the Stroke recovery units. 

It was in one of these meetings with neurologist Bronwyn Jenkins that the idea for the ad was "hatched" by our creative Director Paul Fishlock from The Campaign Palace.  In another of the meetings - with the Stroke Recovery Association - our contact mentioned that one of her members fitted the clinical description of the person in the ad script. 

That person was David Bostock.  Rather than directly ask David if he would like to appear in the ad, we gave him a copy of the script to consider. 

While he as recovered significantly from the person depicted in the ad, he felt that getting back into a wheelchair and to be that person again would be too painful.  So we used actors in the ad and David made himself available for media interviews. 

Q2. Your previous fim was"What disease do you want?" and emphasized the various health warnings printed on the packs (as does The Voice Within). Do you believe the TV ads reinforce the health warnings, and vice-versa? Do people calling the quitline mention the TV ads as a motive to call (the quitline number also being on the pack)?

Trish Cotter: I do believe that the tv ads reinforce the health warnings and vise-versa.

This was certainly our objective and while I don't have the data on this yet to give you there are a number of things that point to this.
1. Recognition of the Amputation (gangrene) TV ad we ran last year remained very high for months after the ads went off air (we do continuous tracking research).
2. In 2006 when health warnings were introduced and we ran two very strong health warnings ads, (plus others) over a long period of time, we had a 2.4% decline in the adult smoking prevalence in NSW (this is unprecedented).
3. Also in the year 2006 calls to the Quitline doubled to 57,000 - the Quitline number appears on the cigarette packs now and is also on the end-tag of ever tv advertisement we run.

Q3. The films are not officially posted on YouTube although some do find their way on this popular server. Can you tell us about your policy/strategy toward posting tobacco control ads on YouTube and other similar services? It seems that talent fees are often a road block against making the film available on line. Is that the case?

Trish Cotter: We purchase media based on target audience consumption and negotiate talent fees on that basis. Free to air television in Australia is still the most effective avenue to reach large numbers of NSW smokers.

 

Q4. Can you tell us about the financial aspect of this campaign and about your global yearly budget for media communication? How many campaigns do you plan per year, how much is spent on the various media (TV, radio, movie theaters, internet, billboards, print) and last but not least, where does the money come from? 

Trish Cotter:The Cancer Institute NSW is a state government agency.

We work in partnership with other agencies in NSW such as NSW Health to deliver on an agreed Tobacco Action Plan. 

The tobacco control budget for the Cancer Institute for the 2006 was $10M (Australian), we spent almost $6M on media placement (with the vast majority of that on free to air television), the rest on research and production and funding the NSW Quitline. 

The $6M bought approximately 32 weeks of mass media advertising from April to December, we ran six campaigns over that period.

Q5. How do you decide the theme and style of each TV ad? Did you devise a mutli-year media strategy laying out the various themes that will appear? Is the tobacco control community involved in this process or is it esentially the responsibility of media professionals and advertising agencies?

Trish Cotter:The responsibility for themes is very much our responsibility, not an external agency. 

We didn't devise a multi-year media strategy laying out the various themes but we do have a commitment focussing on adults with health consequences messages supported by the Quitline. 

This is what our research tells us will be effective.  In addition, we regularly do exploratory research with smokers to gauge their attitudes and beliefs around smoking.

 

 

Q6. Is there anything else you would like to add?

Trish Cotter: Regarding use of actors in television commercials - this issue is often debated.

I think it needs to be dealt with on a case by case basis.  Obviously in a testimonial ad it is best to use the real person, however this needs to be balanced with compassionate consideration for their medical and emotional state.

Thank you Trish for having taken the time to answer our questions.