Carrot Or Stick Approach? Messaging Effectiveness and Brand Impact

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis:  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends using mass media campaigns to encourage people to quit smoking. ClearWay Minnesota has created campaigns to motivate people to quit smoking and to use our cessation programs, called QUITPLAN Services. In 2012, the CDC launched a national media campaign to promote quitting that featured emotional, graphic ads. ClearWay Minnesota had not yet used hard-hitting messaging to promote QUITPLAN Services because they did not reflect the QUITPLAN brand – a brand that enjoys 80 percent awareness among smokers and high favorability ratings. ClearWay Minnesota used online message testing to compare the CDC’s ads with ClearWay Minnesota’s messaging to identify the most effective ads to encourage people to quit smoking. The following questions were examined:

1. Which ads are the most memorable, attention-grabbing, powerful and informative?
2. How do the ads make smokers feel?
3. Do the ads make smokers think about quitting and motivate them to contact cessation services?
4. Did the ads give smokers new information or perspective?
5. Would the QUITPLAN brand be negatively impacted by being associated with hard-hitting ads?

Methods:  The survey was conducted with tobacco users belonging to established, online research panels who live in Minnesota or the adjoining states. Action Marketing Research developed the questionnaire in collaboration with ClearWay Minnesota and fielded the survey. Participants were randomly assigned to see a series of videos. The videos were streamed with an embedded Flash player from a dedicated media hosting site. Respondents had to verify that they had seen and heard the spots to continue on to the online survey questions. Iterative weighting was applied to the data.

Results:  Twenty-nine percent of respondents thought the term “motivational” described the CDC ads “very well,” versus 19 percent for QUITPLAN ads. The CDC’s ads were identified as the most motivational and helpful – a powerful combination in getting people to quit smoking. One of the ads tested was found to be more “depressing” and this detracted from its impact. QUITPLAN ads were the most “liked,” but this did not boost motivation. None of the ads were identified as “annoying” or making people angry.

Conclusions:  Fear is an excellent motivator, but to be most effective it must be accompanied by confidence in quitting and hope. Based on the findings, we determined that the QUITPLAN brand would not be impacted by being associated with harder-hitting ads.

Implications for research and/or practice:  Through this research ClearWay Minnesota determined it could improve its campaign by running CDC ads tagged with the QUITPLAN Services brand. Motivating people to take action is critical to success, and harder-hitting ads that offer hope appear more effective than supportive, likeable ads about how to quit. However, using a variety of ads may still be important. More research needs to be done on how long highly emotional ads can be used before they lose effectiveness. In addition, monitoring the impact of using hard-hitting messages with the brand will be important for future decisions.