Developing and Implementing a Smoking Cessation Campaign with a Creative, Novel Approach to Motivate Behavior Change

Background:  According to the CDC, in 2007, nearly 20% of U.S. adults were smokers.  Over 40% tried to quit in the preceding year; however, smoking rates have remained relatively stable since 1990.  

Program background:  The American Lung Association (ALA) conducted research to better understand smokers’ mindset and behavior for a new cessation campaign.  A key research finding – that 6 in 10 former smokers required multiple quit attempts to quit successfully – led to the Quitter in You campaign, which  positions past quit attempts as necessary steps along the way toward quitting for good, not as failures. ALA launched the Quitter in You campaign in September 2009.  Goals included increasing evidence-based quit attempts through a replicable five-city pilot and increasing awareness of ALA cessation resources.  Key strategies included engaging local communities and leveraging media to raise campaign awareness and disseminate its messages.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Coupled with data from Porter Novelli’s proprietary HealthStyles survey, ALA conducted focus groups to test the Quitter in You message platform among motivated smokers.  Through the Styles data and qualitative research, ALA gathered information about motivators for and barriers to quitting and received feedback on message concepts, enabling ALA to identify the message that would most effectively motivate smokers to quit, and hone in on the appropriate target audience: Caucasian females, ages 35-53, with an annual household income of less than $50,000, who are motivated to quit (i.e., previously tried quitting). ALA leveraged a community coalition of traditional and non-traditional partners for local support.  Additionally, ALA launched a new online resource and used radio, print and out-of-home media to raise awareness of the campaign and ALA resources. Findings suggest that the campaign effectively met its goals.  A pre- and post-survey conducted in the five pilot markets to assess campaign awareness and impact on smokers demonstrated that:

• The campaign reached approximately 1 in 4 smokers
• Those who recall the campaign were more likely than all smokers to say they turn to ALA for information and to have made a recent quit attempt
• The greatest percentage of those who say they saw or heard the campaign recall hearing a radio ad or seeing a story in the news

Additionally:

• Quitterinyou.org received 14,832 visits, 10,581 Absolute Unique Visitors, and 40,695 page views, with 78.23%  new visits (September 2009 - March 2010)
• Media outreach resulted in 254,661,839 total Earned Media Impressions
• The radio buy resulted in $142,934 total added value, a 61% ROI
• Local market activity resulted in:
  • 82 campaign events/activities
  • 57 coalition organizations
  • Added capacity for support services in each community
  • 148,490 promotional materials distributed

Conclusions:  Quitter in You is motivating and relevant to smokers because it brings an innovative way to think about smoking cessation using a supportive, non-judgmental approach, and it effectively engages local communities and coalitions for support.  

Implications for research and/or practice:  To effectively reach audiences with a common call-to-action, it's imperative to develop and implement a unique messaging platform to break through the clutter.