The Impact of Cdc's Tips From Former Smokers Campaign: Web, Social, and Digital Media Outreach

Background: Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States, killing more than 440,000 Americans annually. More than 8M Americans are living with a smoking-related disease. Although the dangers of smoking are known, long-term decline has recently slowed. State and local mass media campaigns have motivated smokers to quit, but have often been conducted only occasionally or with low exposure levels.

Program background: CDC launched a national tobacco education campaign “Tips From Former Smokers” (Tips) in 2012. Tips featured real people from a variety of backgrounds affected by tobacco use who told their stories of how smoking and secondhand smoke had negatively impacted their lives. Building on the success of Tips 2012, CDC launched a new round of advertisements in 2013, which featured health conditions and population groups not previously addressed. Both campaigns featured a robust Web, digital and social media presence in English and Spanish complementing the traditional mass media campaign. Many improvements were made to the Website, including adding mobile sites for viewing on phones and tablets. Tips social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and Pinterest) expanded campaign reach through cost-effective measures, including targeting specific profiles and adding minimal paid weight behind posts. The digital buy increased in efficiency, enabling OSH to reach various key demographics through placement on contextually relevant sites to various ethnicities and backgrounds.

Evaluation Methods and Results: OSH measured the effectiveness of Web, social, and digital media efforts using a variety of metrics, which will be described in this presentation. The metrics for the Tips website included the number of unique visitors, length of time on site, unique visits, page views and third party tracking, which enabled OSH to track the success of the digital ads in driving visitors to cessation content. For social media, OSH tracked increased likes, shares and re-tweets. For digital activities, OSH tracked impressions, click through rates, and completion rates (view and call). Digital and social media cues (such as URL and hashtags) were integrated into the campaign with direct links to CDC sites so audiences could access resources and engage with the Tips content more easily.

Conclusions: By effectively using innovative web, social and digital media strategies, the reach of the campaign was extended to include people who might have been missed by more traditional methods, and provided the opportunity for additional engagement after the end of the campaign.

Implications for research and/or practice:  Web, social and digital media channels, in conjunction with traditional mass media, can help reach target audiences with the tools and resources they need to quit smoking or encourage a loved one to quit.