Integrating Open Government in Two Smoking Campaigns: Lessons Learned From the FDA Center for Tobacco Products

Background:  The new FDA Center for Tobacco Products issued Regulations Restricting the Sale and Distribution of Cigarettes and Smokeless Tobacco to prevent children from beginning smoking.   The Center launched an integrated youth prevention campaign as well as a campaign to educate retailers about the law and enlist their support to protect kids.

Program background:  This presentation provides a broad overview of the strategic user-generated content and open government tools utilized in the youth prevention campaign and retail education campaigns. Each campaign required different innovative approaches, tools and channels for engagement opportunities.  This presentation will discuss how the campaigns blend traditional communication tools with innovative collaborative open government strategies.     The youth prevention campaign targets teens and tweens in an effort to prevent them from beginning to smoke.  The campaign aims to empower youth in the fight against tobacco and to enlist their support in keeping their community safe from tobacco.  According to Pew Internet & American Life Project, 64 percent of online teens create digital content and 39 percent share content (December, 2007).  The youth prevention campaign will directly engage youth in the channels they regularly use such as YouTube and Facebook.  To ensure wider engagement, contests were built into the marketing strategy to create user-generated content.  Additional elements of the campaign are being developed in collaborative environments to ensure that new components of the campaign resonate with the target audience. The retailer campaign goal is to educate retailers about FDA’s new regulations and appeal to their sense of community. The retail campaign reaches the diverse group of stakeholders through web dialogues, educational text messaging, and ideation tools to develop and refine content.  Retailers are also engaged through contests such as online quizzes. 

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Both campaigns are based on collaborative formative and continual research including drectly engaging stakeholders in conversations, focus testing and labs to develop messaging, web dialogues with stakeholders, and ideation tools for continued development of content and constant feedback.User-generated content and collaborative tools can be used to constantly reevaluate and refocus communication strategy and appropriate use of each communication channel. These campaigns will be evaluated by web metrics, participation metrics, user comments and surveys.  In some cases, creative solutions will be used to measure message retention and engagement, like online and text message quizzes.  Another example, would be the use of a web dialogue to measure message effectiveness with target audiences and obtain input on key campaign decisions.

Conclusions:  Evidence shows that utilizing user-generated content and collaborative tools are effective methods to engage the public, increase participation, and refine campaigns.  Integrating traditional communication tools with innovative engagement strategies can strengthen health communications campaigns.

Implications for research and/or practice: User-generated content, collaborative tools and ideation technology can be used to further health communication campaigns for diverse audiences.  Tools should be selected carefully for the appropriate audience.