An Overview of Cdc's National Tobacco Prevention and Control Media Campaign

Background: Tobacco companies continue to spend billions of dollars every year marketing a line of products that is deadly to consumers.  Tobacco use is still the leading preventable cause of chronic disease and premature death in the world.  As a result, one of the CDC’s most pressing disease prevention priorities is helping smokers to quit and discouraging children and young people from starting to smoke in the first place.

Program background: CDC will launch Phase one of a media campaign in April 2011 to support the efforts of HHS Region 6 and HHS Region 4 states and communities. Existing resources from CDC’s Media Campaign Resource Center (MCRC) are being used for this campaign, which will include hard-hitting advertisements and other communication strategies to increase awareness, change attitudes, beliefs and norms. CDC has completed ad effectiveness testing in HHS Region 6 to evaluate the motivation and memorability of each ad on consumer behavior.

Evaluation Methods and Results: 

• A pre/post placement survey will be conducted.
• Pre-campaign survey will assess tobacco-related knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.
• Post-campaign survey will assess the recall of the televised campaign media messages and examine potential changes in tobacco-related knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.
• A post-buy analysis will be delivered to provide detail on impressions; reach and frequency of media spend.
• Measures that we’ll be reporting:
  • Leveraged media buys
  • Aided/Unaided campaign awareness in funded states
  • Extended number of people reached by social media 

Additionally, CDC has begun Phase two of this campaign to develop new hard-hitting and emotionally compelling campaign materials (broadcast, print, radio, outdoor, etc). In March message platforms were tested in three online bulletin board discussions among option leaders, parents, and members of the general population. It was determined that an underlying theme of immediacy was linking all three platforms, and that this theme tested positively among the respondents. A creative brief will be developed by the end of March and storyboards and creative concepts will be developed at the end of April.

Conclusions: According to CDC's Best Practices for Comprehensive Tobacco Control Programs, counter-marketing and other media must have sufficient reach, frequency, and duration to be successful. This is the first federally funded national media campaign that aims to support state and local community tobacco control efforts. This initiative will deliver broadcast media at or above the recommended levels in 14 major media markets identified for the campaign. This is significant, because most states are unable to support media placement at the recommended levels for adequate reach.

Implications for research and/or practice: CDC will be able to use the results from Phase one of this campaign to gain a greater understanding of tobacco use health consequences message receptivity, media purchasing strategy, and to inform future national campaigns. The findings can directly support current and future state and local tobacco control programs and can also be applicable to other health communication and media professionals in the development, implementation and evaluation of their initiatives.